"Among the many creation retellings and variations, this one takes the cake." — THE HORN BOOK (starred review)When Big Momma makes the world, she... doesn’t mess around. With a baby on her hip and laundry piling up, she demands light and dark, earth and sky, creepers and crawlers, and lots of folks to trade stories with on the front porch. And when the work is done, Big Momma, she is pleased all right. "That’s good," she says. "That’s real good." With down-home language and infectious rhythms, Phyllis Root spins a creation myth like no other, brilliantly illustrated by the incomparable Helen Oxenbury.

Big Mouth No I did not. I did not, I did not. I did not say those things, and I did not plan those things. Won't It anyone believe me? Ugly Girl ... All right, Ugly Girl made a mistake. I'd told my mom what I'd heard in the cafeteria, and she'd told Dad. Evidently. I'd thought for sure they would want me to speak up for the truth.

The American prison system has grown tenfold since the 1970s, but crime rates in the United States have not decreased. This doesn't surprise Michael... J. Lynch, a critical criminologist, who argues that our oversized prison system is a product of our consumer culture, the public's inaccurate beliefs about controlling crime, and the government's criminalizing of the poor. While deterrence and incapacitation theories suggest that imprisoning more criminals and punishing them leads to a reduction in crime, case studies, such as one focusing on the New York City jail system between 1993 and 2003, show that a reduction in crime is unrelated to the size of jail populations. Although we are locking away more people, Lynch explains that we are not targeting the worst offenders. Prison populations are comprised of the poor, and many are incarcerated for relatively minor robberies and violence. America's prison expansion focused on this group to the exclusion of corporate and white collar offenders who create hazardous workplace and environmental conditions that lead to deaths and injuries, and enormous economic crimes. If America truly wants to reduce crime, Lynch urges readers to rethink cultural values that equate bigger with better.

Why do we age? Why cooperate? Why do so many species engage in sex? Why do the tropics have so many species? When did humans start to affect world... climate? This book provides an introduction to a range of fundamental questions that have taxed evolutionary biologists and ecologists for decades. Some of the phenomena discussed are, on first reflection, simply puzzling to understand from an evolutionary perspective, whilst others have direct implications for the future of the planet. All of the questions posed have at least a partial solution, all have seen exciting breakthroughs in recent years, yet many of the explanations continue to be hotly debated.Big Questions in Ecology and Evolution is a curiosity-driven book, written in an accessible way so as to appeal to a broad audience. It is very deliberately not a formal text book, but something designed to transmit the excitement and breadth of the field by discussing a number of major questions in ecology and evolution and how they have been answered. This is a book aimed at informing and inspiring anybody with an interest in ecology and evolution. It reveals to the reader the immense scope of the field, its fundamental importance, and the exciting breakthroughs that have been made in recent years.

Building on the foundation she established with her ground-breaking book, The Critical Years, Parks invites us to take up responsibility for providing... thoughtful mentorship and mentoring environments during the wilderness years of young adulthood. In this updated edition she addresses recent current events: violence in our culture, smart phones, mixed spirituality/religious identities, social media/networking, the economic crisis, changing racial identity, cultural shifts and other forces shaping the narrative of young adulthood today. She provides concrete ways of employing the theory in different types of mentoring communities, more on the relationship between meaning-making (faith/religion/spirituality) and disciplinary learning and includes new (and more timely) stories and illustrations.

Rubina has been invited to her first birthday party, and her mother, Ami, insists that she bring her little sister along. Rubina is mortified, but she... can?t convince Ami that you just don?t bring your younger sister to your friend?s party. So both girls go, and not only does Sana demand to win every game, but after the party she steals Rubina?s prized party favor, a red lollipop. What?s a fed-up big sister to do? Rukhsana Khan?s clever story and Sophie Blackall?s irresistible illustrations make for a powerful combination in this fresh and surprising picture book.

Tim Russert's #1 New York Times bestseller -- now in paperback. Now in paperback -- the #1 best-selling Father’s Day book of 2004, with over half a... million copies sold in hardcover. Tim Russert, one of America’s most watched and trusted news anchors‚ connected with readers across the nation with his critically acclaimed memoir about growing up in the 1950s and the special bond between fathers and sons.

''We need to celebrate the birth of this book. It is a vivid embodiment of how young children learn scientific ideas when their teachers create... conditions that match the ways youngsters are able to integrate meaning. Constructivist practice comes to life in these pages. At a time of narrow high-stakes tests, here is a model that preserves truly professional practice.''--From the Foreword by Doris Pronin Fromberg, Hofstra University''Big Science for Growing Minds is a wonderful, jam-packed storehouse of research-based ideas for the effective teaching of science. The author is masterful in her ability to clearly explain current brain research and cognitive science studies and to exemplify the research through practical classroom applications.''--Lawrence Lowery, Professor (emeritus), Graduate School of Education and the Lawrence Hall of Science, University of California at BerkeleyStrong evidence from recent brain research shows that the intentional teaching of science is crucial in early childhood. Big Science for Growing Minds describes a groundbreaking curriculum that invites readers to rethink science education through a set of unifying concepts or ''big ideas.'' Using an integrated learning approach, the author shows teachers how to use readily available, low-cost items to create a safe classroom setting that fosters hands-on learning and exploration of real-life problems. The text includes classroom activities that connect science learning to mathematics, technology, art, and literacy.Book Features: * Shows teachers how to address fundamental biology, chemistry, physics, and Earth science concepts using easy-to-find objects. * Describes constructivist learning environments that are aligned with emerging data on brain development. * Includes guidance for adopting approaches and instructional strategies consistent with NSTA, NSES, and NAEYC guidelines.Contents: Part 1--Science in Early Childhood: Young Scientists with Growing Ideas * A Constructivist View of Learning * Learning to Care and Caring to Learn * Part 2--Landscapes of Learning Science * Science as Disciplined Wonder * Science Learning Within Family, Community, and Nature * Science of Learning * Liberty and Science for All * Negotiating the Science Curriculum * Part 3--From Unifying Science Concepts to Curriculum Unifying Science Concepts Unifying Concepts: The Physical Environment Unifying Concepts: The Living Environment * Part 4--From Curriculum to the Wonder of Science * Science in the Shopping Cart: A Chemistry Unit * Water, Soil, Sand, and Salt: An Earth Science Unit * Putting It All Together

Nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, the tiny town of Big Stone Gap is home to some of the most charming eccentrics in the state. Ave Maria... Mulligan is the town's self-proclaimed spinster, a thirty-five year old pharmacist with a "mountain girl's body and a flat behind." She lives an amiable life with good friends and lots of hobbies until the fateful day in 1978 when she suddenly discovers that she's not who she always thought she was. Before she can blink, Ave's fielding marriage proposals, fighting off greedy family members, organizing a celebration for visiting celebrities, and planning the trip of a lifetime—a trip that could change her view of the world and her own place in it forever. Brimming with humor and wise notions of small-town life, Big Stone Gap is a gem of a book with a giant heart. . . .

This lively and erudite essay addresses a broad, central question: How can we improve our understanding of the large-scale social and political changes... that transformed the world of the nineteenth century and are transforming our world today? "In this short, brilliant book Tilly suggests a way to think about theories of historical social change....This book should find attentive readers both in undergraduate courses and in graduate seminars. It should also find appreciative readers, for Tilly is a writer as well as a scholar." -Choice -- CONTENTS: Such Intellectual Equipment. Worrying About Social Change ; Thinkers Face Change ; What Was Happening? ; Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons ; What To Do --
Four Pernicious Postulates. False Principles ; Society Is a Thing Apart ; Mental Events cause Social Behavior ; " Social Change" Is A Coherent Phenomenon ; Stage Theories --
Four More Pernicious Postulates. Differentiation Is A Progressive Master Process ; Differentiation versus Integration ; Change, Strain, Disorder ; Illegitimate versus Legitimate Force --
Comparing. Eradicating Pernicious Postulates ; Will Total History Save Us? ; The Case For Huge (But Not Stupendous) Comparisons ; No Safety In Numbers ; Ways Of Seeing ; Looking At Comparisons --
Individualizing Comparisons. The Will To Individualize ; Kings Or People? ; Cracks In The Foundation --
Universalizing Comparisons. The Decline Of Natural History ; Models of Revolution; Theda Skocpol's Revolutions --Finding Variation. How And When To Look For Variation ; Barrington Moore Compares --
Encompassing Comparisons. Encompassing The World ; Stein Rokkan Encompasses ; Rokkan's "Conceptual Maps Of Europe" ; What's Wrong? What Should We Do About It? --
Conclusions. The Tasks At Hand.

"Each book by Jack Kerouac is unique, a telepathic diamond. With prose set in the middle of his mind, he reveals consciousness itself in all its... syntatic elaboration, detailing the luminous emptiness of his own paranoiac confusion. Such rich natural writing is nonpareil in later half XX century, a synthesis of Proust, Céline, Thomas Wolfe, Hemingway, Genet, Thelonius Monk, Basho, Charlie Parker, and Kerouac's own athletic sacred insight. "Big Sur's humane, precise account of the extraordinary ravages of alcohol delirium tremens on Kerouac, a suerior novelist who had strength to complete his poetic narrative, a task few scribes so afflicted have accomplished—others crack up. Here we meet San Francisco's poets & recognize hero Dean Moriarty ten years after On the Road. Jack Kerouac was a 'writer,' as his great peer W.S. Burroughs says, and here at the peak of his suffering humorous genius he wrote through his misery to end with 'Sea,' a brilliant poem appended, on the hallucinatory Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur." —Allen Ginsberg

In his great triptych "The Millennium" Bosch used oranges and other fruits to symbolize the delights of Paradise.Whence Henry Miller's title for this,... one of his most appealing books; first published in 1957, it tells the story of Miller's life on the Big Sur, a section of California coast where he lived for fifteen years. Big Sur is the portrait of a place—one of the most colorful in the U.S.—and of the extraordinary people Miller knew there: writers (& writers who didn't write), mystics seeking truth in meditation (& the not-so-saintly looking for sex-cults or celebrity), sophisticated children & adult innocents; geniuses, cranks & the unclassifiable. Henry Miller writes with a buoyancy & brimming energy that are infectious. He has a fine touch for comedy. But this is also a serious book—the testament of a free spirit who has broken through the restraints & cliches of modern life to find within himself his own kind of paradise.

Written some time after his best-known works, Big Sur follows Jack Kerouac's comedown from his carefree youth and unwanted fame, presenting his mature... confrontation of some of his most troubling emotional issues.