Cassie Knight is bubbly, stylish, and super-friendly, the fashion queen at her Texas school. When her father moves the family to Maine, Cassie's in for a huge culture shock.

Cassie Knight's best friends from Texas are coming to visit her for her birthday, but when they arrive, they don't like her new best friend, Etoile, and Etoile doesn't like them.

ÿHow far will Bix go to be popular? A delightful and humorous diary account from "Bix," a plain Jane from a struggling family trying to outdo and steal the third-grade classroom stage from Valerie, whose mother is a famous author. Miss Popular may be a wheelchair-user, but she knows how to charm the classroom, and her pink bejeweled wheelchair rules. In a pique of frustration, Bix resorts to lies to steal the limelight from Miss Popular. She also announces that she will be having a puppy shower, and everyone except Miss Popular is invited. Can Bix pull it off? Readers will:Learn the importance of honestyDiscover that being loved and being popular are not the same thingFind out how even a small act of kindness pays big dividendsLearn how to rise above circumstances to be a better person "Jewel Kats does it again! She has the ability to shine a light on disabilities with characters that empower and inspire! And she does it in way that entertains thoroughly! Her optimism and sense of fun explode on every page!" --Dan Parent,ÿArchie Comics "Miss Popularÿis a testament to young girls everywhere: guiding them through the issues of popularity, honesty and the fun of life! Jewel Kats has created a character that I would have loved to be my friend when I was a third-grader! Spectacular in every way!" --Robin Marvel, author ofÿAwakening Consciousness: A Girl?s Guide! Learn more atÿwww.JewelKats.com from Marvelous Spirit Press www.MarvelousSpirit.com Juvenile Fiction : Social Issues - Special Needs

Cassandra is excited to celebrate her 11th birthday with her new friends from Arkansas. But when her party falls on the same day as another, more popular girl, she realizes that the people she thought were her friends might not be. Will anyone show up to celebrate her birthday with her? Or will Cassie be on her own?

For use in schools and libraries only. Best friends Sophie and Kylie have always done everything together, with Kylie leading the way, but when Sophie is good at cheerleading and Kylie is not, Sophie is torn between her friendship with Kylie and her cheerleading.

When Cassie's sixth-grade class goes on a field trip to a nature preserve, Cassie worries about being cut off from civilization and forced to participate in potentially dangerous activities.

Critics of intelligence tests writers such as Robert Sternberg, Howard Gardner, and Daniel Goleman have argued in recent years that these tests neglect important qualities such as emotion, empathy, and interpersonal skills. However, such critiques imply that though intelligence tests may miss certain key noncognitive areas, they encompass most of what is important in the cognitive domain. In this book, Keith E. Stanovich challenges this widely held assumption.Stanovich shows that IQ tests (or their proxies, such as the SAT) are radically incomplete as measures of cognitive functioning. They fail to assess traits that most people associate with good thinking, skills such as judgment and decision making. Such cognitive skills are crucial to real-world behavior, affecting the way we plan, evaluate critical evidence, judge risks and probabilities, and make effective decisions. IQ tests fail to assess these skills of rational thought, even though they are measurable cognitive processes. Rational thought is just as important as intelligence, Stanovich argues, and it should be valued as highly as the abilities currently measured on intelligence tests.

Brilliant and engagingly written, Why Nations Fail answers the question that has stumped the experts for centuries: Why are some nations rich and others poor, divided by wealth and poverty, health and sickness, food and famine? Is it culture, the weather, geography? Perhaps ignorance of what the right policies are? Simply, no. None of these factors is either definitive or destiny. Otherwise, how to explain why Botswana has become one of the fastest growing countries in the world, while other African nations, such as Zimbabwe, the Congo, and Sierra Leone, are mired in poverty and violence? Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson conclusively show that it is man-made political and economic institutions that underlie economic success (or lack of it). Korea, to take just one of their fascinating examples, is a remarkably homogeneous nation, yet the people of North Korea are among the poorest on earth while their brothers and sisters in South Korea are among the richest. The south forged a society that created incentives, rewarded innovation, and allowed everyone to participate in economic opportunities. The economic success thus spurred was sustained because the government became accountable and responsive to citizens and the great mass of people. Sadly, the people of the north have endured decades of famine, political repression, and very different economic institutions—with no end in sight. The differences between the Koreas is due to the politics that created these completely different institutional trajectories. Based on fifteen years of original research Acemoglu and Robinson marshall extraordinary historical evidence from the Roman Empire, the Mayan city-states, medieval Venice, the Soviet Union, Latin America, England, Europe, the United States, and Africa to build a new theory of political economy with great relevance for the big questions of today, including: - China has built an authoritarian growth machine. Will it continue to grow at such high speed and overwhelm the West? - Are America’s best days behind it? Are we moving from a virtuous circle in which efforts by elites to aggrandize power are resisted to a vicious one that enriches and empowers a small minority? - What is the most effective way to help move billions of people from the rut of poverty to prosperity? More philanthropy from the wealthy nations of the West? Or learning the hard-won lessons of Acemoglu and Robinson’s breakthrough ideas on the interplay between inclusive political and economic institutions? Why Nations Fail will change the way you look at—and understand—the world.

The magical adventures of an eccentric Mary Poppins-esque heroine and her flying feline charges, sure to charm readers big and small. The first book for children by an internationally acclaimed novelist and poet. Miss Petitfour enjoys having adventures that are "just the right size - fitting into a single, magical day." She is an expert at baking and eating fancy iced cakes, and her favorite mode of travel is par avion. On windy days, she takes her sixteen cats out for an airing: Minky, Misty, Taffy, Purrsia, Pirate, Mustard, Moutarde, Hemdela, Earring, Grigorovitch, Clasby, Captain Captain, Captain Catkin, Captain Cothespin, Your Shyness and Sizzles. With the aid of her favorite tea party tablecloth as a makeshift balloon, Miss Petitfour and her charges fly over her village, having many little adventures along the way. Join Miss Petitfour and her equally eccentric felines on five magical outings -- a search for marmalade, to a spring jumble sale, on a quest for "birthday cheddar", the retrieval of a lost rare stamp and as they compete in the village's annual Festooning Festival. A whimsical, beautifully illustrated collection of tales that celebrates language, storytelling and small pleasures, especially the edible kind!

Suggests activities to be used at home to accompany the reading of Miss Nelson is missing by Harry Allard in the classroom.