When the handsome and strange Orpheus strolls onto the beach and sings, good friends Claire and Ella each find a new understanding of themselves.

I won my first fight when I was eleven years old, and I've been throwing punches ever since. Fighting is the purest, truest, most elemental thing there is. Some people describe heaven as a sea of unending white. Where choirs sing and loved ones await. But for me, heaven was something else. It sounded like the bell at the beginning of a round, it tasted like adrenaline, it burned like sweat in my eyes and fire in my belly. It looked like the blur of screaming crowds and an opponent who wanted my blood. For me, heaven was the octagon. Until I met Millie, and heaven became something different. I became something different. I knew I loved her when I watched her stand perfectly still in the middle of a crowded room, people swarming, buzzing, slipping around her, her straight dancer's posture unyielding, her chin high, her hands loose at her sides. No one seemed to see her at all, except for the few who squeezed past her, tossing exasperated looks at her unsmiling face. When they realized she wasn't normal, they hurried away. Why was it that no one saw her, yet she was the first thing I saw? If heaven was the octagon, then she was my angel at the center of it all, the girl with the power to take me down and lift me up again. The girl I wanted to fight for, the girl I wanted to claim. The girl who taught me that sometimes the biggest heroes go unsung and the most important battles are the ones we don't think we can win.

WINNER OF THE 2018 JOHN BURROUGHS MEDAL FOR OUTSTANDING NATURAL HISTORY WRITING “Both a love song to trees, an exploration of their biology, and a wonderfully philosophical analysis of their role they play in human history and in modern culture.” —Science Friday The author of Sounds Wild and Broken and the Pulitzer Prize finalist The Forest Unseen visits with nature’s most magnificent networkers — trees David Haskell has won acclaim for eloquent writing and deep engagement with the natural world. Now, he brings his powers of observation to the biological networks that surround all species, including humans. Haskell repeatedly visits a dozen trees, exploring connections with people, microbes, fungi, and other plants and animals. He takes us to trees in cities (from Manhattan to Jerusalem), forests (Amazonian, North American, and boreal) and areas on the front lines of environmental change (eroding coastlines, burned mountainsides, and war zones.) In each place he shows how human history, ecology, and well-being are intimately intertwined with the lives of trees. Scientific, lyrical, and contemplative, Haskell reveals the biological connections that underpin all life. In a world beset by barriers, he reminds us that life’s substance and beauty emerge from relationship and interdependence.

From the New York Times bestselling author of Frankly in Love comes a young adult romantic comedy about identity and acceptance. Perfect for fans of John Green and To All the Boys I've Love Before and now in paperback! When Sunny Dae--self-proclaimed total nerd--meets Cirrus Soh, he can't believe how cool and confident she is. So when Cirrus mistakes Sunny's older brother Gray's bedroom--with its electric guitars and rock posters--for Sunny's own, he sort of, kind of, accidentally winds up telling her he's the front man of a rock band. Before he knows it, Sunny is knee-deep in the lie: He ropes his best friends into his scheme, begging them to form a fake band with him, and starts wearing Gray's rock-and-roll castoffs. But no way can he trick this amazing girl into thinking he's cool, right? Just when Sunny is about to come clean, Cirrus asks to see them play sometime. Gulp. Now there's only one thing to do: Fake it till you make it.

A spider is a “never-tangling dangling spinner / knitting angles, trapping dinner.” A tree frog proposes, “Marry me. Please marry me… / Pick me now. / Make me your choice. / I’m one great frog / with one strong voice.” VanDerwater lets the denizens of the forest speak for themselves in twenty-six lighthearted, easy-to-read poems. As she observes, “Silence in Forest / never lasts long. / Melody / is everywhere / mixing in / with piney air. / Forest has a song.” The graceful, appealing watercolor illustrations perfectly suit these charming poems that invite young readers into the woodland world at every season.

As in many Native American communities, people on the San Carlos Apache reservation in southeastern Arizona have for centuries been exposed to contradictory pressures. One set of expectations is about conversion and modernizationÑspiritual, linguistic, cultural, technological. Another is about steadfast perseverance in the face of this cultural onslaught. Within this contradictory context lies the question of what validates a sense of Apache identity. For many people on the San Carlos reservation, both the traditional calls of the Mountain Spirits and the hard edge of a country, rock, or reggae song can evoke the feeling of being Apache. Using insights gained from both linguistic and musical practices in the communityÑas well as from his own experience playing in an Apache country bandÑDavid Samuels explores the complex expressive lives of these people to offer new ways of thinking about cultural identity. Samuels analyzes how people on the reservation make productive use of popular culture forms to create and transform contemporary expressions of Apache cultural identity. As Samuels learned, some popular songsÑsuch as those by Bob MarleyÑare reminiscent of history and bring about an alignment of past and present for the Apache listener. Thinking about Geronimo, for instance, might mean one thing, but "putting a song on top of it" results in a richer meaning. He also proposes that the concept of the pun, as both a cultural practice and a means of analysis, helps us understand the ways in which San Carlos Apaches are able to make cultural symbols point in multiple directions at once. Through these punning, layered expressions, people on the reservation express identities that resonate with the complicated social and political history of the Apache community. This richly detailed study challenges essentialist notions of Native American tribal and ethnic identity by revealing the turbulent complexity of everyday life on the reservation. Samuels's work is a multifaceted exploration of the complexities of sound, of language, and of the process of constructing and articulating identity in the twenty-first century.

They called him Baby Moses when they shared his story on the ten o'clock news: the little baby left in a basket at a dingy Laundromat, born to a crack addict and expected to have all sorts of problems. People love babies, even sick babies. Even crack babies. But babies grow up to be kids, and kids grow up to be teenagers. Nobody wants a messed up teenager. And Moses was messed up. To be with him, Georgia would change her life in ways she could never have imagined ...

Songs of frustration and defiance from African slaves and displaced Indian laborers are expressed in a harsh and lyrical Guyanese Creole far removed from contemporary English in these provocative Caribbean poems. An insightful critical apparatus of English translations surrounds these lyrics, shedding light on their meaning, while at the same time cleverly commenting on the impossibility of translating Creole and parodying critical attempts to explain and contextualize Caribbean poetry. Twenty years after the initial release of this work, the power of these poems and the self-fashioned critique that accompanies them remain a lively and vital part of Caribbean literature.

A book describing a step-by-step process for bringing emotionally-connected, theatrical acting to the singing of songs.