What If Your Biggest Challenges, Struggles, and Heartbreaks Were Actually Preparing You for Your Greatest Transformation... and Contribution to the World? Can your most difficult moments be the ones that shed the greatest light in your life? These courageous visionaries say YES! Join these transformational authors as they share their own touching, amazing, and deeply inspiring true stories of their trials, triumphs, and ultimate transformations. In this fifth wave of Pebbles in the Pond, you'll connect with a diverse group of messengers whose stories are unique, yet whose messages have a common thread of inspiration, hope, healing, transformation, and new possibilities. As they share their straight-from-the-heart experiences, they invite you to discover how to transform your own challenges into the greatest gifts and blessings in your life. You'll also discover how one transformed life can cause ripples of good that expand out into the world - just like a "pebble in the pond." Our hope is that you'll also be inspired to discover what your pebble is so you can create a wave of positive change too! As you'll discover on these pages, it doesn't matter where you came from or what you've been through... you are loved and you do make a difference! "A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history." Gandhi Read this book and be inspired by this small body of determined spirits. They are indeed helping to shift the course of history through their own transformations and the ways they choose to live their lives every day. They look forward to sharing their journeys with you.

It's the 9th of August 1990. The sky is clear, and the view from Mount Agassiz East Ridge in Utah's High Uintah Mountains is stunning, several lake-filled basins were in full view. Suddenly the air explodes. A bolt of lightning struck Layne Oliver in the back of the head, hurtling him twenty feet down the two hundred-foot cliff face of Agassiz's East Ridge. Pebble in a Pond is about the ripples, "good and bad," created by the decisions we make, the actions we take, even the words we say. The day Layne was struck by the lightning bolt he went against his own rule of always following his gut instinct and didn't leave the area. His life seemed to have always been full of struggle. Reflecting back, he realized that each challenge prepared him for the next one, that there were always good things to learn from the bad experiences. Life is full of challenges; however, you gotta have a reason to survive that is more powerful than the reasons you may have to give up.

All pebbles are unique. No two are alike. Some are big, and some are small. Just as each of us, we are unique. As we walk through life, the pond sends ripples out to the world when the pebbles are tossed into the water. Some make beautiful ripples, and others just drop into the pond. May these stories encourage you and help you handle the pebbles in your life as you walk through this world with joy and anticipation, knowing that God has a plan for you and will make a way for you if you will let him.

Buddy Bear and Mama spend the day at a pond learning about wildlife.

All pebbles are unique. No two are alike. Some are big; some are small. Just as each of us, we are unique. As we walk through life, the pond sends ripples out to the world when the pebbles are tossed into the water. Some make beautiful ripples; others just drop into the pond. May these stories encourage you and help you handle the pebbles in your life as you walk through this world with joy and anticipation, knowing that God has a plan for you and will make a way for you if you will let him.

Explores how plants, insects, fish, birds, and other animals come together in ponds and make them their homes.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the Booker Prize–winning author of Lincoln in the Bardo and Tenth of December comes a literary master class on what makes great stories work and what they can tell us about ourselves—and our world today. LONGLISTED FOR THE PEN/DIAMONSTEIN-SPIELVOGEL AWARD • ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR: The Washington Post, NPR, Time, San Francisco Chronicle, Esquire, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Town & Country, The Rumpus, Electric Lit, Thrillist, BookPage • “[A] worship song to writers and readers.”—Oprah Daily For the last twenty years, George Saunders has been teaching a class on the Russian short story to his MFA students at Syracuse University. In A Swim in a Pond in the Rain, he shares a version of that class with us, offering some of what he and his students have discovered together over the years. Paired with iconic short stories by Chekhov, Turgenev, Tolstoy, and Gogol, the seven essays in this book are intended for anyone interested in how fiction works and why it’s more relevant than ever in these turbulent times. In his introduction, Saunders writes, “We’re going to enter seven fastidiously constructed scale models of the world, made for a specific purpose that our time maybe doesn’t fully endorse but that these writers accepted implicitly as the aim of art—namely, to ask the big questions, questions like, How are we supposed to be living down here? What were we put here to accomplish? What should we value? What is truth, anyway, and how might we recognize it?” He approaches the stories technically yet accessibly, and through them explains how narrative functions; why we stay immersed in a story and why we resist it; and the bedrock virtues a writer must foster. The process of writing, Saunders reminds us, is a technical craft, but also a way of training oneself to see the world with new openness and curiosity. A Swim in a Pond in the Rain is a deep exploration not just of how great writing works but of how the mind itself works while reading, and of how the reading and writing of stories make genuine connection possible.

"Color photos and simple text describe animals and their adaptations to a pond habitat"--Provided by publisher.

This handy resource describes and illustrates the concepts underlying the “First Principles of Instruction” and illustrates First Principles and their application in a wide variety of instructional products. The book introduces the e3 Course Critique Checklist that can be used to evaluate existing instructional product. It also provides directions for applying this checklist and illustrates its use for a variety of different kinds of courses. The Author has also developed a Pebble-in-the-Pond instructional design model with an accompanying e3 ID Checklist. This checklist enables instructional designers to design and develop instructional products that more adequately implement First Principles of Instruction.

Dread Locks is the first entry in the Dark Fusion series from master storyteller Neal Shusterman. He cleverly weaves together familiar parts of fairy tales and Greek mythology to tell the story of fourteen-year-old Parker Bear, rich and utterly bored with life—until a new girl arrives in town. Tara's eyes are always hidden behind designer sunglasses, and her hair, blond with glimmering spirals, seems almost alive. Parker watches, fascinated, as one by one Tara chooses high school students to befriend; he even helps her by making the necessary introductions. Over time, her “friends” develop strange quirks, such as drinking gallons of milk, eating dirt, and becoming lethargic. By the time Parker realizes what Tara is doing, he is too embroiled to stop her. In fact, she has endowed him with certain cravings of his own. . . .To say more would spoil the spooky fun of this wild thriller—let the twist speak for itself and leave you still as a statue.