A hilarious tale of self-acceptance, resilience and the joy of standing out! "What's not to love? Are they being sarcastic? These jeans are amazing; my butt looks fantastic!" Rooster is thrilled when his new skinny jeans arrive in the mail. Eager to show them off to his friends, he soon learns that not everyone is so accepting of his new look. Feeling disheartened, Rooster hides away from the other animals' cruel words. However, when he catches a glace of himself in the jeans, his confidence in his appearance grows. Can Rooster prove his farmyard friends wrong and teach them the power of self-acceptance? Rooster Wore Skinny Jeans is a fantastic, funny rhyming book for 3 – 5 year olds. It teaches vital lessons about the effect of unkind words on others and the power of self-confidence. A must-have for any pre-school bookshelf!

Everybody knows your typical dragon breathes fire. But when Crispin tries to breathe fire on his seventh birthday, fire doesn't come out—only whipped cream! Each time Crispin tries to breathe fire, he ends up with Band-Aids marshmallows teddy bears? Crispin wonders if he’ll ever find his inner fire. But when a family emergency breaks out, it takes a little dragon with not-so-typical abilities to save the day. With wry humor and whimsical illustrations, Not Your Typical Dragon is the perfect story for any child who can't help feeling a little bit different.

"Mournful, insightful, and mystical...Mosley's best work of fiction." —Elle New York Times bestselling author Walter Mosley introduces us to Socrates Fortlow, an "astonishing character" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) in this acclaimed collection of linked stories. "I either committed a crime or had a crime done to me every day I was in jail. Once you go to prison you belong there." Socrates Fortlow has done his time: twenty-seven years for murder and rape, acts forged by his own two rock-breaking hands. Now, he has come home to a new kind of prison: two battered rooms in an abandoned building in Watts. Working a dead-end job at the supermarket and moving perilously close to invisibility, Socrates seeks inner truth and redemption amid the violence and hopelessness of South Central Los Angeles. In fourteen intertwining tales, Socrates grapples with situations that are never easy as he attempts to hold on to a job and offer a lifeline to a young man on his same bloodstained path. In Socrates's battle-scarred wisdom, there is hope of turning the world around in this "powerful, hard-hitting, unrelenting, poignant short fiction" (Booklist).

Debut picture book about a rabbit artist who vanishes, but lives on in his work.

Retells, in tall-tale fashion, how Levi Strauss went to California during the Gold Rush, saw the need for a sturdier kind of trouser, and invented jeans.

The acclaimed travel writer chronicles a year of train travel across China in a revealing travelogue that “gives the reader much to relish and think about” (Publishers Weekly). The author of the train travel classics The Great Railway Bazaar and The Old Patagonian Express, takes to the rails once again in this account of his epic journey through China. The always irascible, infectiously curious author “is in top form as he describes the barren deserts of Mongolia and Xinjiang, the ice forests of Manchuria and the dry hills of Tibet. He captures their otherworldly, haunting appearances perfectly. He is also right on target when he talks about the ugliness of China's poorly planned, hastily built cities” (Mark Salzman, The New York Times). Theroux hops aboard a train as part of a tour group in London and sets out for China's border. He then spends a year traversing the country, where he pieces together a fascinating snapshot of a unique moment in history. From sweeping and desolate natural landscapes to the dense metropolises of Shanghai, Beijing, and Canton, Theroux offers an unforgettable portrait of a magnificent land and an extraordinary people.

A hilariously absurd picture book about what would happen if it started raining frogs! "Watch out!" said the woman on the TV. "Today is going to be froggy. . . very froggy!" The weather forecast predicts a very froggy day. . . and it's right! There are frogs on the bus, frogs in the park, frogs in the supermarket, even frogs at school. They are everywhere and it's driving people hopping mad! How will people live their lives with all these frogs around? Kirkus Reviews calls Froggy Day a "boisterous concept book [that] offers opportunity for wordplay, vocabulary-building, and audience participation." This story will have kids jumping for joy spotting all the places that the frogs have landed! A fun read for children aged 2-5 years old, sure to be a favorite for the whole family.

Steve details his descent from bright star to burnout in this newly repackaged edition of the definitive, highly acclaimed novel from the creator of Veronica Mars and Party Down. Houston, sophomore year: Steve is on top of the world. He and his friends are the talk of the school. He’s in love with a terrific girl. He can even deal with “the astronaut”—a world-famous hero who happens to be his father. San Diego, senior year: Steve is bummed out, drugged out, flunking out. A no-nonsense counselor says he can graduate if he writes a 100-page paper. So Steve starts writing, and as the paper becomes more and more personal, he reveals how a National Merit Scholar has become an under-achieving stoner. And in telling how he got to where he is, Steve discovers how to get to where he wants to be.

As evocative and moving as Charles de Lint's Newford books, with the three-dimensional protagonists and enthralling action of Mercedes Lackey's fantasies, Nine Gates makes our world today as excitingly strange and unfamiliar as any fantasy realm . . .and transports readers to a wondrous magical world drawn from Chinese lore and legend. Brenda Morris has barely had time to become accustomed to the idea that she has some of the powers of the Rat, a member of the Chinese Zodiac; that her elderly, former child-star "aunt," Pearl, is the Dragon; and that the young African-American former soldier she trains beside is the Dog. Brenda has learned that our world is not the only world and that her not-quite-Chinese ancestors came from a magical place, the Lands of Smoke and Sacrifice, created thousands of years ago by the destruction of China's books and scholars during the time of the first Emperor. Now, generations later, the Lands are once again at war, and the magics of the Thirteen Orphans are desperately needed. A mission to capture those powers went disastrously wrong and now the Lands' Dragon, Tiger, Snake, and Monkey are trapped on Earth unless the Orphans can build the Nine Gates. To do that, they must first save the Four Guardians of the Land Between, who are under magical attack. Complicating things is the fact that Brenda has fallen hard for the handsome man who is the Tiger, much to the distress of the sensual young woman who is the Snake. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Look for the Helpers is a shaped board book that highlights the emergency vehicles that help make our world a better place. It’s a big, beautiful world, filled with awesome adventures. But sometimes emergencies happen. When they do, look for the helpers! Helpers are all around you. Fire trucks, ambulances, police cars, and more crowd the pages of this shaped board book that teaches children to look for helpers wherever they go. With a search-and-find twist, each scene highlights different types of emergency vehicles in action. Look for the Helpers is an adventurous book that introduces little ones to the caring helpers who make the world safer.