Are bugs out to get us? Mosquitoes suck our blood. Wasps sting! Lice move into our hair and raise families there! Scorpions strike with poison. Why do they do these things? Find out why bugs are bugging us! Animals That Bug Us is part of the It’s All Animals series. This high-interest series uses fascinating facts about animals to introduce life-science vocabulary and concepts, including traits, inheritance, and the survival value of animal behaviors. Read-UP! with 3 levels of readability. Each level (set of 5 books) contains a book on a different life science subject so a student can keep reading in one content area if he or she prefers.

Black holes and blue holes, chocolate hills, and solar explosions. Earth and space have some real surprises! This high-interest nonfiction series includes reading experiences in five content areas: Life Science, Earth and Space Science, History/Social Studies, Technology, and Careers. It introduces grades 4–8 content-area vocabulary in a medium that struggling readers can master. Read-UP! with 3 levels of readability. Each level (set of 5 books) contains a book from the five content areas, so a student can keep reading in one content area if he or she prefers.

Discover the essential thinking tools you’ve been missing with The Great Mental Models series by Shane Parrish, New York Times bestselling author and the mind behind the acclaimed Farnam Street blog and “The Knowledge Project” podcast. This first book in the series is your guide to learning the crucial thinking tools nobody ever taught you. Time and time again, great thinkers such as Charlie Munger and Warren Buffett have credited their success to mental models–representations of how something works that can scale onto other fields. Mastering a small number of mental models enables you to rapidly grasp new information, identify patterns others miss, and avoid the common mistakes that hold people back. The Great Mental Models: Volume 1, General Thinking Concepts shows you how making a few tiny changes in the way you think can deliver big results. Drawing on examples from history, business, art, and science, this book details nine of the most versatile, all-purpose mental models you can use right away to improve your decision making and productivity. This book will teach you how to: Avoid blind spots when looking at problems. Find non-obvious solutions. Anticipate and achieve desired outcomes. Play to your strengths, avoid your weaknesses, … and more. The Great Mental Models series demystifies once elusive concepts and illuminates rich knowledge that traditional education overlooks. This series is the most comprehensive and accessible guide on using mental models to better understand our world, solve problems, and gain an advantage.

Why do we have animals in our homes? You know about dogs and cats. But why might you choose a pig as a pet? How about a snake? The answer is “traits.” Learn about traits and why they matter. Learn all about animals that live with us! Animals That Are Pets is part of the It’s All Animals series. This high-interest series uses fascinating facts about animals to introduce life-science vocabulary and concepts, including traits, inheritance, and the survival value of animal behaviors. Read-UP! with 3 levels of readability. Each level (set of 5 books) contains a book on a different life science subject so a student can keep reading in one content area if he or she prefers.

When the Sudanese civil war reaches his village in 1985, 11-year-old Salva becomes separated from his family and must walk with other Dinka tribe members through southern Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya in search of safe haven. Based on the life of Salva Dut, who, after emigrating to America in 1996, began a project to dig water wells in Sudan. By a Newbery Medal-winning author.

Become a star reader with True! Based on popular True and the Rainbow Kingdom episodes, this three-level reading series is designed for pre-readers and beginning readers.

The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his 2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles that built Pixar’s singularly successful culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve. “Might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable. As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the twenty-five movies that followed—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention, such as: • Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come up with something better. • It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them. • The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them. • A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody. Creativity, Inc. has been significantly expanded to illuminate the continuing development of the unique culture at Pixar. It features a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and changes and updates throughout. Pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.