Sarah and Duck Stay at the Duck Hotel


Book Description

When Sarah & Duck get to the Duck Hotel, they soon discover it's very different to a human hotel. The residents can nest anywhere they like, there's a helter-skelter, there's water everywhere and there's a feather-preening salon. Duck is right at home but Sarah can't quite settle in - how will Duck make her feel at ease? Based on the award-winning TV series Sarah & Duck, winner of the BAFTA for Best Pre-school Animation in 2014.




Sarah and Duck Visit the Doctor


Book Description

Poor Sarah is feeling under the weather. A trip to the doctor is in order - and with a little help from Duck, Sarah is on the mend in no time. In this book, fans of Sarah and Duck will love this quirky take on being ill and visiting the doctor.




Slow Death by Rubber Duck


Book Description

Funny, thought-provoking, and incredibly disturbing, Slow Death by Rubber Duck reveals that just the living of daily life creates a chemical soup inside each of us. Pollution is no longer just about belching smokestacks and ugly sewer pipes - now, it's personal. The most dangerous pollution has always come from commonplace items in our homes and workplaces. Smith and Lourie ingested and inhaled a host of things that surround all of us all the time. This book exposes the extent to which we are poisoned every day of our lives. For this book, over the period of a week - the kind of week that would be familiar to most people - the authors use their own bodies as the reference point and tell the story of pollution in our modern world, the miscreant corporate giants who manufacture the toxins, the weak-kneed government officials who let it happen, and the effects on people and families across the globe. Parents and concerned citizens will have to read this book. Key concerns raised in Slow Death by Rubber Duck: • Flame-retardant chemicals from electronics and household dust polluting our blood. • Toxins in our urine caused by leaching from plastics and run-of-the-mill shampoos, toothpastes and deodorant. • Mercury in our blood from eating tuna. • The chemicals that build up in our body when carpets and upholstery off-gas. Ultimately hopeful, the book empowers readers with some simple ideas for protecting themselves and their families, and changing things for the better.




Dare to Bloom


Book Description

Either by choice or by circumstance, we all encounter times of starting over. Seasons of hardships, abundance, seeking, and struggle all have a purpose because growth demands change. Dare to Bloom urges us to be both vulnerable and resilient in new seasons of life as we boldly position ourselves for what God has for us next. Serial entrepreneur and author, Zim Flores (neè Ugochukwu), reveals the challenges she's faced and how even her failures have helped shape her sense of purpose. Her parents had big plans for her life. The daughter of Nigerian immigrants, Zim Flores was uprooted from her community as a young girl, marking the beginning of her quest for true identity. Though she experienced unprecedented worldly success as a teenager and young adult, Zim declares that even when we feel pressured by the world around us, our true identity is never at risk. In Dare to Bloom, Zim offers practical and hard-won truths about: How to reclaim your true identity How to surrender your desired outcomes to God How to move forward after broken friendships How to find comfort during your darkest hours How to navigate new beginnings with hope for whatever is next How to joyfully participate in your own story--even when you don't know what the future holds Dare to Bloom is a powerful gift for readers in times of transition or struggle who need a reminder that their true identity never changes. It empowers those who feel stuck in their current circumstances to follow God obediently into the unknown, finding joy in each new beginning. Inside you'll find: Breathtaking photography from Zim's travels Thoughtful questions for reflection at the end of each chapter Zimisms--wisdom-filled phrases from the author When everything changes around us, it can be easy to think that we're only as good as our last success. Though our identities are challenged day by day, Dare to Bloom encourages us to reclaim our identity in God, who is unchanging through it all.




Between the Lines


Book Description

Told in their separate voices, sixteen-year-old Prince Oliver, who wants to break free of his fairy-tale existence, and fifteen-year-old Delilah, a loner obsessed with Prince Oliver and the book in which he exists, work together to seek his freedom.




Number Talks


Book Description

"A multimedia professional learning resource"--Cover.




Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet


Book Description

"Sentimental, heartfelt….the exploration of Henry’s changing relationship with his family and with Keiko will keep most readers turning pages...A timely debut that not only reminds readers of a shameful episode in American history, but cautions us to examine the present and take heed we don’t repeat those injustices."-- Kirkus Reviews “A tender and satisfying novel set in a time and a place lost forever, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet gives us a glimpse of the damage that is caused by war--not the sweeping damage of the battlefield, but the cold, cruel damage to the hearts and humanity of individual people. Especially relevant in today's world, this is a beautifully written book that will make you think. And, more importantly, it will make you feel." -- Garth Stein, New York Times bestselling author of The Art of Racing in the Rain “Jamie Ford's first novel explores the age-old conflicts between father and son, the beauty and sadness of what happened to Japanese Americans in the Seattle area during World War II, and the depths and longing of deep-heart love. An impressive, bitter, and sweet debut.” -- Lisa See, bestselling author of Snow Flower and the Secret Fan In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol. This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept. Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago. Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart. BONUS: This edition contains a Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet discussion guide and an excerpt from Jamie Ford's Love and Other Consolation Prizes.




Sarah and Duck Go to the Funfair


Book Description

Meet Sarah, and Duck! This brilliantly quirky pairing offer an alternative look at the world as they head off on adventures together. This picture book sees them going to a funfair and having a marvellous time!




Little Failure


Book Description

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD FINALIST NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MICHIKO KAKUTANI, THE NEW YORK TIMES • NAMED ONE OF THE TEN BEST NONFICTION BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY TIME NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY MORE THAN 45 PUBLICATIONS, INCLUDING The New York Times Book Review • The Washington Post • NPR • The New Yorker • San Francisco Chronicle • The Economist • The Atlantic • Newsday • Salon • St. Louis Post-Dispatch • The Guardian • Esquire (UK) • GQ (UK) After three acclaimed novels, Gary Shteyngart turns to memoir in a candid, witty, deeply poignant account of his life so far. Shteyngart shares his American immigrant experience, moving back and forth through time and memory with self-deprecating humor, moving insights, and literary bravado. The result is a resonant story of family and belonging that feels epic and intimate and distinctly his own. Born Igor Shteyngart in Leningrad during the twilight of the Soviet Union, the curious, diminutive, asthmatic boy grew up with a persistent sense of yearning—for food, for acceptance, for words—desires that would follow him into adulthood. At five, Igor wrote his first novel, Lenin and His Magical Goose, and his grandmother paid him a slice of cheese for every page. In the late 1970s, world events changed Igor’s life. Jimmy Carter and Leonid Brezhnev made a deal: exchange grain for the safe passage of Soviet Jews to America—a country Igor viewed as the enemy. Along the way, Igor became Gary so that he would suffer one or two fewer beatings from other kids. Coming to the United States from the Soviet Union was equivalent to stumbling off a monochromatic cliff and landing in a pool of pure Technicolor. Shteyngart’s loving but mismatched parents dreamed that he would become a lawyer or at least a “conscientious toiler” on Wall Street, something their distracted son was simply not cut out to do. Fusing English and Russian, his mother created the term Failurchka—Little Failure—which she applied to her son. With love. Mostly. As a result, Shteyngart operated on a theory that he would fail at everything he tried. At being a writer, at being a boyfriend, and, most important, at being a worthwhile human being. Swinging between a Soviet home life and American aspirations, Shteyngart found himself living in two contradictory worlds, all the while wishing that he could find a real home in one. And somebody to love him. And somebody to lend him sixty-nine cents for a McDonald’s hamburger. Provocative, hilarious, and inventive, Little Failure reveals a deeper vein of emotion in Gary Shteyngart’s prose. It is a memoir of an immigrant family coming to America, as told by a lifelong misfit who forged from his imagination an essential literary voice and, against all odds, a place in the world. Praise for Little Failure “Hilarious and moving . . . The army of readers who love Gary Shteyngart is about to get bigger.”—The New York Times Book Review “A memoir for the ages . . . brilliant and unflinching.”—Mary Karr “Dazzling . . . a rich, nuanced memoir . . . It’s an immigrant story, a coming-of-age story, a becoming-a-writer story, and a becoming-a-mensch story, and in all these ways it is, unambivalently, a success.”—Meg Wolitzer, NPR “Literary gold . . . bruisingly funny.”—Vogue “A giant success.”—Entertainment Weekly




The Wolf Border


Book Description

From the award-winning author of Burntcoat and The Electric Michelangelo, one of the most decorated young British writers working today, comes a literary masterpiece: a breathtaking work that beautifully and provocatively surveys the frontiers of the human spirit and our animal drives. For almost a decade, zoologist Rachel Caine has lived a solitary existence far from her estranged family in England, monitoring wolves in a remote section of Idaho as part of a wildlife recovery program. But a surprising phone call takes her back to the peat and wet light of the Lake District where she grew up. The eccentric Earl of Annerdale has a controversial scheme to reintroduce the Grey Wolf to the English countryside, and he wants Rachel to spearhead the project. Though she’s skeptical, the earl’s lands are close to the village where she grew up, and where her aging mother now lives. While the earl’s plan harks back to an ancient idyll of untamed British wilderness, Rachel must contend with modern-day realities—health and safety issues, public anger and fear, cynical political interests. But the return of the Grey unexpectedly sparks her own regeneration. Exploring the fundamental nature of wilderness and wildness, The Wolf Border illuminates both our animal nature and humanity: sex, love, conflict, and the desire to find answers to the question of our existence—the emotions, desires, and needs that rule our lives.




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