Ride past trucks, buses, and cars. Pedal past monkeys, tigers, and lions. A bike can take you everywhere.

“Thomas’s rhyming reflection on the place Jesus has in a young boy’s life still provides inspiration and comfort to today’s readers.” —School Library Journal A classic for over half a century, If Jesus Came to My House is a tender tale of how a young boy realizes that he can welcome Jesus into his life by helping all people both young and old. This rhymed reflection provides refreshing insight on how we all can learn to be respectful, courteous, giving, and loving toward others. The original two-color illustrations by Henri Sorensen bring the simple inspirational message of this story to life. For generations to come, parents and children will find inspiration in Joan Gale Thomas’s classic book time and time again.

Scrutinizing house dust and air samples with a microscope, indoor air quality expert Jeffrey May seeks to help people identify what is causing their health problems.

The last sixteen years of James Baldwin's life (1971–87) unfolded in a village in the South of France, in a sprawling house nicknamed “Chez Baldwin.” In Me and My House Magdalena J. Zaborowska employs Baldwin’s home space as a lens through which to expand his biography and explore the politics and poetics of blackness, queerness, and domesticity in his complex and underappreciated later works. Zaborowska shows how the themes of dwelling and black queer male sexuality in The Welcome Table, Just above My Head, and If Beale Street Could Talk directly stem from Chez Baldwin's influence on the writer. The house was partially torn down in 2014. Accessible, heavily illustrated, and drawing on interviews with Baldwin's friends and lovers, unpublished letters, and manuscripts, Me and My House offers new insights into Baldwin's life, writing, and relationships, making it essential reading for all students, scholars, and fans of Baldwin.

Libby Henry unabashedly tells her story in this lively memoir set in central Kentucky. She rides her pony rough-shod through the lives of Earl and Beal, her parents, singing The Little Orange Bird. All Earl wants is some "peace," hard to find with a daughter some fifty years his junior, with a croaky voice and coke bottle glasses perparing for a song and dance career, with a dash of fashion. Beal lives vicariously through Libby's short-lived modeling career, her romances, and connections, pleased when she approves, and tending to the unhinged wihen not so pleased. Earl is still looking for "peace," while weathering the car wrecks, the vacatons, and the unexpected in his home-life. And then there's those trips to Lincoln county where Libby's maternal grandfather is a big man in the community, a man of property who also owns the stockyard and is a deputy sheriff, though he hasn't qutie caught up to the times and modernized his house with running water. There's the little old lady who "shot me a dog once," Davy Crockett and Sam Houston make an appearance, and that "bad man" who got his head knocked into a wall by Earl. And darker times too, times of illness, loss, mortgage fraud and divorce. Libby shares all with an enduring sense of humor and a welcoming voice that draw you near and keep you turning pages.

A young girl describes what it’s like when her mom’s new friend comes to stay — a moving story about domestic violence that ends on a hopeful note. The young girl tells us that her mom’s new friend is just like the big bad wolf. At first the wolf is sweet and kind to her mom, though the girl notices the wolf’s cold eyes from the very beginning. When her mom arrives home late one day, the wolf suddenly hurls angry words and terrible names at her. From that day on her mother doesn’t smile anymore. The girl is careful to clean her room and brush her teeth and do everything to keep the peace, but the wolf is unpredictable, throwing plates on the floor, yelling at her mother and holding the girl’s arm so tightly she is left with bruises. Whenever the yelling begins, she hides under the covers in her room. How will she and her mom cope as the wolf becomes increasingly fierce? Valérie Fontaine and Nathalie Dion have created a powerful, moving story about violence in the home that ends on a note of hope. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.3 Describe how characters in a story respond to major events and challenges. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.2.9 Compare and contrast two or more versions of the same story (e.g., Cinderella stories) by different authors or from different cultures. CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.3.2 Recount stories, including fables, folktales, and myths from diverse cultures; determine the central message, lesson, or moral and explain how it is conveyed through key details in the text.

Welcome to an apartment building where the fun never ends! It’s a special day at 3 Maple Street. It’s Little Rabbit’s birthday, and he’s having a party! His friends are invited, and his mother is baking him a cake. But that’s not the only thing going on here. The Cat family is moving in upstairs. The Fox family is having a new baby. Mr. Owl is trying to sleep. There’s so much happening inside (and outside) this lively building, it’s hard to keep track! Kids will want to get their own apartments at 3 Maple Street — or at least spend loads of time visiting!

In this "raucous, moving, and necessary" story by a Pulitzer Prize finalist (San Francisco Chronicle), the De La Cruzes, a family on the Mexican-American border, celebrate two of their most beloved relatives during a joyous and bittersweet weekend. "All we do, mija, is love. Love is the answer. Nothing stops it. Not borders. Not death." In his final days, beloved and ailing patriarch Miguel Angel de La Cruz, affectionately called Big Angel, has summoned his entire clan for one last legendary birthday party. But as the party approaches, his mother, nearly one hundred, dies, transforming the weekend into a farewell doubleheader. Among the guests is Big Angel's half brother, known as Little Angel, who must reckon with the truth that although he shares a father with his siblings, he has not, as a half gringo, shared a life. Across two bittersweet days in their San Diego neighborhood, the revelers mingle among the palm trees and cacti, celebrating the lives of Big Angel and his mother, and recounting the many inspiring tales that have passed into family lore, the acts both ordinary and heroic that brought these citizens to a fraught and sublime country and allowed them to flourish in the land they have come to call home. Teeming with brilliance and humor, authentic at every turn, The House of Broken Angels is Luis Alberto Urrea at his best, and cements his reputation as a storyteller of the first rank. "Epic . . . Rambunctious . . . Highly entertaining." -- New York Times Book Review"Intimate and touching . . . the stuff of legend." -- San Francisco Chronicle"An immensely charming and moving tale." -- Boston GlobeNational Bestseller and National Book Critics Circle Award finalistA New York Times Notable BookOne of the Best Books of the Year from National Public Radio, American Library Association, San Francisco Chronicle, BookPage, Newsday, BuzzFeed, Kirkus, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Literary Hub

An anthology of literature for the youngest children including American and British nursery rhymes, fables, folk tales, poems and stories, as well as from many other sources.

Winner of the PEN Center USA Literary Award for Creative Nonfiction • From the celebrated bestselling author of The House on Mango Street: "This memoir has the transcendent sweep of a full life.” —Houston Chronicle From Chicago to Mexico, the places Sandra Cisneros has lived have provided inspiration for her now-classic works of fiction and poetry. But a house of her own, a place where she could truly take root, has eluded her. In this jigsaw autobiography, made up of essays and images spanning three decades—and including never-before-published work—Cisneros has come home at last. Written with her trademark lyricism, in these signature pieces the acclaimed author of The House on Mango Street and winner of the 2019 PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature shares her transformative memories and reveals her artistic and intellectual influences. Poignant, honest, and deeply moving, A House of My Own is an exuberant celebration of a life lived to the fullest, from one of our most beloved writers.