A wave of pranking is going around. It's all fun and games until someone gets hurt. When the wrong person gets blamed, Meri hopes the real culprit will confess. It's not looking good until Meri gets a little help sorting out duty, loyalty, and courage from real experts--Dorothy, Toto, the Scarecrow, the Tin Woodman, and the Cowardly Lion from The Wonderful Wizard of Oz! Aligned to Common Core Standards and correlated to state standards. Calico is an imprint of Magic Wagon, a division of ABDO.

In a lyrical new novel reminiscent of The Color Purple, Darnella Ford delivers an unforgettable story about about life, love and finding the beauty within oneself.

Veronica struggles to balance softball, friends, and family turmoil in this new honest and heartfelt middle grade novel by Jen Petro-Roy, Life in the Balance. Veronica Conway has been looking forward to trying out for the All-Star softball team for years. She's practically been playing the game since she was a baby. She should have this tryout on lock. Except right before tryouts, Veronica’s mom announces that she’s entering rehab for alcoholism, and her dad tells her that they may not be able to afford the fees needed to be on the team. Veronica decides to enter the town talent show in an effort to make her own money, but along the way discovers a new hobby that leads her to doubt her feelings for the game she thought she loved so much. Is her mom the only one learning balance, or can Veronica find a way to discover what she really wants to do with her life?

Lu Delong risks his life on a dangerous mission to prove his worth to Cangji. Luckily, Lu knows a shortcut to immortality.

Consulting oracles used to be difficult and dangerous. You had to make a pilgrimage plagued with hardship, trudging through the desert to a holy place or person. Or kill a calf to read its liver or a bird to read its entrails. Or study for years to read ink dropped in water. Who has the time? Traditional methods just aren't convenient today. What's a divine wonderer to do? Funny you should ask. In The Book of Ordinary Oracles, Lon Milo DuQuette shows us how to use items lying around the house--from pocket change to chopsticks--to divine answer to everyday questions. He also tells us how to ask the right question and interpret the answer. The tools he provides will make consulting oracles as easy as reaching into your pocket or cupboard. Can one use channel surfing as an oracle? You bet! DuQuette's anecdotes illustrate various divination techniques. Laugh your way to wisdom while learning new ways to look at the I Ching and how to read tarot cards for yourself.

Where do you begin with a writer as original and brilliant as David Foster Wallace? Here — with a carefully considered selection of his extraordinary body of work, chosen by a range of great writers, critics, and those who worked with him most closely. This volume presents his most dazzling, funniest, and most heartbreaking work — essays like his famous cruise-ship piece, "A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again," excerpts from his novels The Broom of the System, Infinite Jest, and The Pale King, and legendary stories like "The Depressed Person." Wallace's explorations of morality, self-consciousness, addiction, sports, love, and the many other subjects that occupied him are represented here in both fiction and nonfiction. Collected for the first time are Wallace's first published story, "The View from Planet Trillaphon as Seen In Relation to the Bad Thing" and a selection of his work as a writing instructor, including reading lists, grammar guides, and general guidelines for his students. A dozen writers and critics, including Hari Kunzru, Anne Fadiman, and Nam Le, add afterwords to favorite pieces, expanding our appreciation of the unique pleasures of Wallace's writing. The result is an astonishing volume that shows the breadth and range of "one of America's most daring and talented writers" (Los Angeles Times Book Review) whose work was full of humor, insight, and beauty.

Betrayal has a deep fascination. It captures our imagination in part because we have all betrayed or been betrayed, in small or large ways. Despite this there has been little serious work on the subject. It was this absence that inspired this book.As Akerstrom notes, betrayal is something that most people have encountered at some point in their lives. She defines betrayal as a breach of trust, when information is shared beyond an agreed upon boundary of relations, whether that boundary is a pair of friends or a nation. Taking as a point of departure Simmers work on secrets and secrecy, Akerstrom discusses categories of.betrayal, and conditions that influence its intensity. Sometimes the betrayer is seen as a hero and at other times a traitor; and sometimes there are competing loyalties. In certain situations, she reminds us, it is difficult to avoid betrayal or the perception of betrayal. Akerstrom discusses strategies people employ to avoid betraying, ranging from not telling, to making sure one does not know about something in the first place. With deft precision, she clarifies distinctions and in the process broadens our understanding.Initially inspired by insights arising from her research on the criminal informer, for which she had done in-depth interviews, Akerstrom supplements these with interviews with policemen. She has also drawn from her experiences in the field of social work, particularly with women's and crime shelters. Using biographies, autobiographies and a broad range of literature related to spies, World War II, the McCarthy era, and recent literature on whistle-blowing, Akerstrom has defined a fascinating theme. While her illustrations are sometimes dramatic, she hopes that readers will perceive obvious parallels with their own experiences. Social psychologists, sociologists, criminologists, and others interested in secrecy, secrets, and those who betray them to others will find this an unusual and absorbing volume.