Changing the Game: Asian Pacific American Female Athletes


Book Description

Meet 17 Asian Pacific American female athletes from yesterday and today! From snowboarder Chloe Kim and hockey player Julie Chu to soccer player Natasha Kai-Marks, these champions will inspire us as we learn how they rose to compete at the highest level and how they pave the way for others to follow.




No Cream Puffs


Book Description

MADISON IS NOT your average 12-year-old girl from Michigan in 1980. She doesn’t use lipgloss, but she loves to play sports, and joins baseball for the summer—the first girl in Southern Michigan to play on a boys’ team. The press call her a star and a trailblazer, but Madison just wants to play ball. Who knew it would be so much pressure? Crowds flock to the games. Her team will win the championship—if she can keep up her pitching streak. Meanwhile, she’s got a crush on a fellow player, her best friend abandons her for the popular girls, the “O” on her Hinton’s uniform forms a bulls-eye over her left breast, and the boy she punched on the last day of school plans to bean her in the championship game.




Discourses on Nations and Identities


Book Description

The third volume of the collected papers of the ICLA congress "The Many Languages of Comparative Literature" includes contributions that focus on the interplay between concepts of nation, national languages, and individual as well as collective identities. Because all literary communication happens within different kinds of power structures - linguistic, economic, political -, it often results in fascinating forms of hybridity. In the first of four thematic chapters, the papers investigate some of the ways in which discourses can establish modes of thinking, or how discourses are in turn controlled by active linguistic interventions, whether in the context of the patriarchy, war, colonialism, or political factions. The second thematic block is predominantly concerned with hybridity as an aspect of modern cultural identity, and the cultural and linguistic dimensions of domestic life and in society at large. Closely related, a third series of papers focuses on writers and texts analysed from the vantage points of exile and exophony, as well as theoretical contributions to issues of terminology and what it means to talk about transcultural phenomena. Finally, a group of papers sheds light on more overtly violent power structures, mechanisms of exclusion, Totalitarianism, torture, and censorship, but also resistance to these forms of oppression. In addition to these chapters, the volume also collects a number of thematically related group sections from the ICLA congress, preserving their original context.




Asian American Sporting Cultures


Book Description

Delves into the long history of Asian American sporting cultures, considering how identities and communities are negotiated on sporting fields Through a close examination of Asian American sporting cultures ranging from boxing and basketball to spelling bees and wrestling, the contributors reveal the intimate connection between sport and identity formation. Sport plays a special role in the processes of citizen-making and of the policing of national and diasporic bodies. It is thus one key area in which Asian American stereotypes may be challenged, negotiated, and destroyed as athletic performances create multiple opportunities for claiming American identities. This volume incorporates work on Pacific Islander, South Asian, and Southeast Asian Americans as well as East Asian Americans, and explores how sports are gendered, including examinations of Asian American men’s attempts to claim masculinity through sporting cultures as well as the “Orientalism” evident in discussions of mixed martial arts as practiced by Asian American female fighters. This American story illuminates how marginalized communities perform their American-ness through co-ethnic and co-racial sporting spaces.




Sumo Joe


Book Description

In this sweet and funny story, Sumo Joe and his friends enjoy pretending to be sumo wrestlers. But when his little sister wants to join their boys-only game, what should Sumo Joe do? Full color.




How to Coach Girls


Book Description

How to Coach Girls provides the most comprehensive guide available to the many issues associated with coaching girls, teams across the spectrum of sports. Volunteer parents and experienced coaches alike will find invaluable advice on the process of making a successful team, encouraging girls to stay in sports beyond the middle school years




Double Vision: Code Name 711


Book Description

In the second book of the action-packed Double Vision series, ordinary twelve-year-old Linc Baker must go undercover in Washington, DC, to stop a CIA mole from assassinating the president. With an unforgettably funny voice, high-stakes espionage, and real American spy history dating back to the Revolutionary War, this is the latest adventure in the Double Vision series that ALA Booklist says "fans of Alex Rider and 39 Clues will love." After the government receives a threat on the president's life from someone named Dagger, supersecret spy agency Pandora wants Linc to go to Washington, DC, to protect the first daughter, Amy, and find the dangerous double of George Washington's legendary coat, rumored to make its wearer invincible. Unfortunately for Linc, his by-the-book agent nemesis, Ben Green, is already on the case and making him look bad. With Amy's help, Linc will have to dig deep into the history of America's first spies—the Culper Ring—to beat Ben at his own game and stop Dagger before it's too late.




The Girl Who Could Fly


Book Description

You just can't keep a good girl down . . . unless you use the proper methods. Piper McCloud can fly. Just like that. Easy as pie. Sure, she hasn't mastered reverse propulsion and her turns are kind of sloppy, but she's real good at loop-the-loops. Problem is, the good folk of Lowland County are afraid of Piper. And her ma's at her wit's end. So it seems only fitting that she leave her parents' farm to attend a top-secret, maximum-security school for kids with exceptional abilities. School is great at first with a bunch of new friends whose skills range from super-strength to super-genius. (Plus all the homemade apple pie she can eat!) But Piper is special, even among the special. And there are consequences. Consequences too dire to talk about. Too crazy to consider. And too dangerous to ignore. At turns exhilarating and terrifying, Victoria Forester's debut novel has been praised by Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight saga, as "the oddest/sweetest mix of Little House on the Prairie and X-Men...Prepare to have your heart warmed." The Girl Who Could Fly is an unforgettable story of defiance and courage about an irrepressible heroine who can, who will, who must . . . fly. This title has Common Core connections. Praise for Victoria Forester and The Girl Who Could Fly: "It's the oddest/sweetest mix of Little House on the Prairie and X-Men. I was smiling the whole time (except for the part where I cried). I gave it to my mom, and I'm reading it to my kids—it's absolutely multigenerational. Prepare to have your heart warmed." Stephenie Meyer, author of the Twilight saga "In this terrific debut novel, readers meet Piper McCloud, the late-in-life daughter of farmers...The story soars, just like Piper, with enough loop-de-loops to keep kids uncertain about what will come next....Best of all are the book's strong, lightly wrapped messages about friendship and authenticity and the difference between doing well and doing good."--Booklist, Starred Review "Forester's disparate settings (down-home farm and futuristic ice-bunker institute) are unified by the rock-solid point of view and unpretentious diction... any child who has felt different will take strength from Piper's fight to be herself against the tide of family, church, and society."--The Horn Book Review The Girl Who Could Fly is a 2009 Bank Street - Best Children's Book of the Year.




What I Saw and How I Lied


Book Description

It seemed like a dream. The world had exploded... Summer's ending, Evie's step-father is finally home from the Second World War, and Evie is sick of her glamorous mother treating her like a little girl. Then a mysterious stranger appears: a handsome ex-GI who served in combat with Evie's step-father. Slowly, Evie realizes that she is falling in love with him. But he has dark secrets, and a strange control over her parents. When he is found dead, Evie's world is shattered. Torn between her family and the man she loved, Evie must betray someone. But who? "Gripping ... beautifully paced and told" The Times "You'll be holding your breath as you turn every page" News of the World




Golden Girl


Book Description

The story of Natalie Coughlin's remarkable battle back from injury and burnout to be-come America's Golden Girl—a two-time Olympic Gold Medal winner in swimming and the most decorated female athlete at the 2004 Olympics Five years ago, Natalie Coughlin's promising swimming career was all but extinguished when a devastating shoulder injury ended her dreams for the 2000 Olympics. After becoming, at age 15, the first person ever to qualify for all 14 women's events at the U.S. Nationals, she seemed destined to follow the path of so many other young swimming stars—devoured by an oppressive training schedule. In Golden Girl, Sports Illustrated's Michael Silver—coauthor of many bestselling sports memoirs—including Dennis Rodman's, Kurt Warner's, and Jerry Rice's—tells the story of Natalie's remarkable journey back from the brink. With complete access to her family, friends, coaches, teammates, and adversaries, Silver details how she made the crucial choice to train with University of California coach Teri McKeever. Together the two, star and coach, have defied long-standing training methods, forcing the swimming community to rethink the ways in which it treats its talent. An inspirational story of a complex and courageous young athlete, Golden Girl is also a fascinating portrait of the fractious world of competitive swimming.