Waking up on a scorching deserted beach, fourteen-year-old Mimi Reagan fears she didnt survive the lightning storm that sent her tearing through her familys cornfields in Iowa. Lying in the bleach-white sand, she discovers that wherever she is, she isnt there alone. Ethan, Jess, and Jake, the only other inhabitants of this island, are also imprisoned. Strangers to each other, Mimi and Ethan realize they can hear each others thoughts. They know everything about one another. Jess and Jake experience the same phenomenon. And while Ethan and Mimi feel an immediate intimacy at their mystical knowledge, this vulnerability has driven Jess and Jake to mutual disgust. The island holds a power too great for these four captives to fully comprehend. Ripping, inverted cyclones torture the waterline. Bloodthirsty sea-beasts stalk the shores. Even the sun and moon disobey the common laws of nature. As the four teens struggle to find a way home, they realize this island has a distinct plan for each of them. They each must face their worst fear. The island creates the perfect adversarycomposed of all their insecurities, armed with the knowledge of their weaknesses, and poised for a death strike. The choice becomes clear: overcome or perish.

The GrandFather Tree' invites the reader into a simple walk in the woods, revealing surprising and delightful insights into the relationships between family and nature. By comparing the characteristics of the mighty Cottonwood tree to the child's Grandfather, lessons from nature become very tangible. Enjoy sharing these nature lessons with someone you love; and your appreciation for nature and family will flourish.

NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • From the world's leading forest ecologist who forever changed how people view trees and their connections to one another and to other living things in the forest—a moving, deeply personal journey of discovery Suzanne Simard is a pioneer on the frontier of plant communication and intelligence; her TED talks have been viewed by more than 10 million people worldwide. In this, her first book, now available in paperback, Simard brings us into her world, the intimate world of the trees, in which she brilliantly illuminates the fascinating and vital truths--that trees are not simply the source of timber or pulp, but are a complicated, interdependent circle of life; that forests are social, cooperative creatures connected through underground networks by which trees communicate their vitality and vulnerabilities with communal lives not that different from our own. Simard writes--in inspiring, illuminating, and accessible ways—how trees, living side by side for hundreds of years, have evolved, how they learn and adapt their behaviors, recognize neighbors, compete and cooperate with one another with sophistication, characteristics ascribed to human intelligence, traits that are the essence of civil societies--and at the center of it all, the Mother Trees: the mysterious, powerful forces that connect and sustain the others that surround them. And Simard writes of her own life, born and raised into a logging world in the rainforests of British Columbia, of her days as a child spent cataloging the trees from the forest and how she came to love and respect them. And as she writes of her scientific quest, she writes of her own journey, making us understand how deeply human scientific inquiry exists beyond data and technology, that it is about understanding who we are and our place in the world.

This "stunning journey through a country that is home to exhilarating natural wonders, and a scarring colonial past . . . makes breathtakingly clear the connection between nature and humanity, and offers a singular portrait of the complexities inherent to our ideas of identity, family, and love" (Refinery29). A chance discovery of letters written by her immigrant grandfather leads Jessica J. Lee to her ancestral homeland, Taiwan. There, she seeks his story while growing closer to the land he knew. Lee hikes mountains home to Formosan flamecrests, birds found nowhere else on earth, and swims in a lake of drowned cedars. She bikes flatlands where spoonbills alight by fish farms, and learns about a tree whose fruit can float in the ocean for years, awaiting landfall. Throughout, Lee unearths surprising parallels between the natural and human stories that have shaped her family and their beloved island. Joyously attentive to the natural world, Lee also turns a critical gaze upon colonialist explorers who mapped the land and named plants, relying on and often effacing the labor and knowledge of local communities. Two Trees Make a Forest is a genre–shattering book encompassing history, travel, nature, and memoir, an extraordinary narrative showing how geographical forces are interlaced with our family stories.

A young couple begin their life together in the Colorado wilderness--they clear the land, build a house, and plan for the baby that will soon be born. But when a fierce winter storm blows in, they are left with little hope. Thomas Locker's glorious paintings and Keith Strand's inspiring reverie bring the Christmas spirit to life.

Great-grandfather proves that one doesn't need a lot of ammunition to be a successful hunter.

Five-year-old Harriet's grandfather explains that everything that is born has to die sometime, but that God's love makes all things new.

This autobiographical story tells of ten-year-old Sookan and her family's suffering and humiliation in Korea, first under Japanese rule and after the Russians invade, and of a harrowing escape to South Korea.

The Discontent of Brother Turnip and Grandfather Tree By: Marlene Hitt The Discontent of Brother Turnip and Grandfather Tree tests the idea that, if we could, we would want to be something else: an eagle, a porpoise, a comet? Who knows? What would happen if we changed places as Grandfather Tree and Brother Turnip do? Grandparents will like this story. It is for them too.

Gary Soto writes that when he was five "what I knew best was at ground level." In this lively collection of short essays, Soto takes his reader to a ground-level perspective, resreating in vivid detail the sights, sounds, smells, and textures he knew growing up in his Fresno, California, neighborhood. The "things" of his boyhood tie it all together: his Buddha "splotched with gold," the taps of his shoes and the "engines of sparks that lived beneath my soles," his worn tennies smelling of "summer grass, asphalt, the moist sock breathing the defeat of basesall." The child's world is made up of small things--small, very important things.