Children are like wet cement-moldable and impressionable. In this best-selling book, Anne Ortlund shows parents how to practice verbal affirmation, a simple yet powerful technique for raising children to be secure, loving adults. She gives specific suggestions for each stage of childhood, from infancy to the teenage years and beyond.Sprinkled with stories of Anne's own childhood and parenting experiences. Won the 1982 Christy Award as Best Marriage/Family Book of the Year.

Who says words need to be concrete? This collection shapes poems in surprising and delightful ways. Concrete poetry is a perennially popular poetic form because they are fun to look at. But by using the arrangement of the words on the page to convey the meaning of the poem, concrete or shape poems are also easy to write! From the author of the incredibly inventive Lemonade: And Other Poems Squeezed from a Single Word comes another clever collection that shows kids how to look at words and poetry in a whole new way.

Bestselling author Ortlund takes readers through each age of childhood, offering specific suggestions for practicing verbal affirmation, a simple but powerful technique for raising children to be secure, loving adults. Readers will receive the guidance needed to help children grow joyously toward his or her goals.

From The New York Times bestselling author of Prayers for Sale comes the moving and powerful story of a small town after a devastating avalanche, and the life changing effects it has on the people who live there Whiter Than Snow opens in 1920, on a spring afternoon in Swandyke, a small town near Colorado's Tenmile Range. Just moments after four o'clock, a large split of snow separates from Jubilee Mountain high above the tiny hamlet and hurtles down the rocky slope, enveloping everything in its path including nine young children who are walking home from school. But only four children survive. Whiter Than Snow takes you into the lives of each of these families: There's Lucy and Dolly Patch—two sisters, long estranged by a shocking betrayal. Joe Cobb, Swandyke's only black resident, whose love for his daughter Jane forces him to flee Alabama. There's Grace Foote, who hides secrets and scandal that belies her genteel façade. And Minder Evans, a civil war veteran who considers his cowardice his greatest sin. Finally, there's Essie Snowball, born Esther Schnable to conservative Jewish parents, but who now works as a prostitute and hides her child's parentage from all the world. Ultimately, each story serves as an allegory to the greater theme of the novel by echoing that fate, chance, and perhaps even divine providence, are all woven into the fabric of everyday life. And it's through each character's defining moment in his or her past that the reader understands how each child has become its parent's purpose for living. In the end, it's a novel of forgiveness, redemption, survival, faith and family.

A hybrid novella of prose poems, collages, and drawings.

Through the use of gripping emotions and familiar childhood experiences The Boy in Two Places paints a picture of how life for a boy will look in the End Times compared to his old life. Through the unmistakable difficulties and the awe-inspiring glories of the End Times, the boy finds that his desires, motivations, and his entire outlook on life have changed. In a playful, yet sober way, The Boy in Two Places hopes to inspire conversation among families to consider the promised reality of what's ahead for all of us as Jesus' return draws near.

Offers a collection of poetry for young readers from numerous visual poets, including Maureen W. Armour and John Hollander.

New York Times Bestseller: This anthology of Erma Bombeck’s most memorable and humorous essays is a tribute to one of America’s sharpest wits. When she began writing her regular newspaper column in 1965, Erma Bombeck’s goal was to make housewives laugh. Thirty years later, she had published more than four thousand columns, and earned countless laughs—from housewives, presidents, and everyone in between. With grace, good humor, and razor-sharp prose, she gently skewered every aspect of the American family. This collection holds the best of her columns—not just her famous quips, but also the heartbreaking observations that gave her writing such weight. In 1969, Erma wrote: “screaming kids, unpaid bills, green leftovers, husbands behind newspapers, basketballs in the bathroom. They’re real . . . they’re warm . . . they’re the only bit of normalcy left in this cockeyed world, and I’m going to cling to it like life itself.” With what Publishers Weekly calls her “infectious sense of human absurdity,” Erma Bombeck’s writing remains a timeless examination of the still-cockeyed world. This ebook features an illustrated biography of Erma Bombeck including rare images and never-before-seen documents from the author’s estate.

Is that a bird? Is it a plane? No, it's a poem! Concrete poems are shaped like their subjects. They can look like objects, animals, or even people. You won't find many straight lines here! Award-winning author Brian P. Cleary explains how concrete poems work—and uses them to create all sorts of wild wordplay. Ode to a Commode is packed with mind-bending poems to make you puzzle and ponder. And when you've finished reading, you can try your hand at writing your own concrete poems!

"A collection of ten short stories that all take place in the same day about kids walking home from school"--