"An entertaining memoir that reads like a sitcom." "Made me laugh until tears were coming down my face." In Growing up Greenpoint, Tommy Carbone captures what it was like to be a kid during the 1970s and 80s in Brooklyn, New York. This funny, and sometimes emotional, memoir follows the years Tommy was educated not only in the classrooms of St. Stan's, but on the streets of Greenpoint. It was there, playing street games with friends, being cornered by muggers, playing kissing games with the girls, spending time with family, and constantly seeking out the best snack foods in the neighborhood, where Tommy learned a lot about life; although he may not have known it at the time. A simple conversation, years later, about the New York City Blackout of 1977 sparks Tommy to recall his youth in the city he loved. His stories will bring you into the action of what it was like to dodge cars during a ballgame, to take a hike to another borough in search of a particular burger, to the hours spent playing pinball in a corner candy store, and how special it was to build traditions with three generations of Polish and Italian relatives in Brooklyn's garden spot. The vivid descriptions of his antics of what it was like to grow up during those years will transport you to the sounds and smells of living in the city during those trying years. Reading this book, you'll be entertained, and at the same time, you may shake your head wondering how Tommy ever survived - Growing up in Greenpoint.

If you'd like to grow your own food but don't think you have the space, look up! In urban and suburban areas across the country, farms and gardens are growing atop the rooftops of residential and commercial buildings. In this accessible guide, author Annie Novak's passion shines as she draws on her experience as a pioneering sky-high farmer to teach best practices for raising vegetables, herbs, flowers, and trees. The book also includes interviews, expert essays, and farm and garden profiles from across the country, so you'll find advice that works no matter where you live. Featuring the brass tacks on green roofs, container gardening, hydroponics, greenhouse growing, crop planning, pest management, harvesting tips, and more, The Rooftop Growing Guide will have you reimagining the possibilities of your own skyline.

In Growing up Greenpoint, Tommy Carbone captures what it was like to be a kid during the 1970s and 80s in Brooklyn, New York. This funny, and sometimes emotional, memoir follows the years Tommy was educated not only in the classrooms of St. Stan's, but on the streets of Brooklyn, New York.

This ethnographic study looks at teenagers trapped in poverty--how some succeed in the struggle to get out and others finally give up trying. It is an outgrowth of interviews with some 900 teens in New York City, Cleveland, Louisville, and Meridian, Mississippi. The neighborhoods where they live are socially and racially diverse. Among them are white areas slding into poverty as traditional blue-collar jobs in smokestack industries fade away, and black and Hispanic neighborhoods where chronic unemployment has long been the prevailing tradition and fact of life. Based on the teenagers' own accounts, the book describes their experiences with working and seeking work, achievements in school and athletics, family life, and the positive influences of their peers and adult mentors. It also details the negative choices that tend to make poverty a life sentence: prostitution and street hustles, pregnancy and early parenthood, gang membership and criminal outlets, drugs and withdrawal into despair. Still, hope is an unquenchable attribute of youth, and it bubbles up in this book as the authors show how much these teenagers seek to do for themselves in exercising their limited options.

Who gets to speak for China? During the interwar years, when American condescension toward “barbarous” China yielded to a fascination with all things Chinese, a circle of writers sparked an unprecedented public conversation about American-Chinese relations. Hua Hsu tells the story of how they became ensnared in bitter rivalries over which one could claim the title of America’s leading China expert. The rapturous reception that greeted The Good Earth—Pearl Buck’s novel about a Chinese peasant family—spawned a literary market for sympathetic writings about China. Stories of enterprising Americans making their way in a land with “four hundred million customers,” as Carl Crow said, found an eager audience as well. But on the margins—in Chinatowns, on Ellis Island, and inside FBI surveillance memos—a different conversation about the possibilities of a shared future was taking place. A Floating Chinaman takes its title from a lost manuscript by H. T. Tsiang, an eccentric Chinese immigrant writer who self-published a series of visionary novels during this time. Tsiang discovered the American literary market to be far less accommodating to his more skeptical view of U.S.-China relations. His “floating Chinaman,” unmoored and in-between, imagines a critical vantage point from which to understand the new ideas of China circulating between the world wars—and today, as well.

In Growing up Greenpoint, Tommy Carbone captures what it was like to be a kid during the 1970s and 80s in Brooklyn. This funny, and sometimes emotional, memoir follows the years Tommy was educated not only in the classrooms of St. Stan's, but on the streets of Greenpoint. It was there, playing street games with friends, being cornered by muggers, playing kissing games with the girls, spending time with family, and constantly seeking out the best snack foods in the neighborhood, where Tommy learned a lot about life; although he may not have known it at the time. A simple conversation, years later, about the New York City Blackout of 1977 sparks Tommy to recall his youth in the city he loved. His stories will bring you into the action of what it was like to dodge cars during a ballgame, to take a hike to another borough in search of a particular burger, to the hours spent playing pinball in a corner candy store, and how special it was to build traditions with three generations of Polish and Italian relatives in Brooklyn's garden spot. The vivid descriptions of his antics of what it was like to grow up during those years will transport you to the sounds and smells of living in the city during those trying years. Reading this book, you'll be entertained, and at the same time, you may shake your head wondering how Tommy ever survived - Growing up in Greenpoint.

Now available in paperback, Dasha Tolstikova’s acclaimed graphic novel A Year Without Mom follows twelve-year-old Dasha through a year full of turmoil after her mother leaves for America. It is the early 1990s in Moscow, and political change is in the air. But Dasha is more worried about her own challenges as she negotiates family, friendships and school without her mother. Just as she begins to find her own feet, she gets word that she is to join her mother in America — a place that seems impossibly far from everything and everyone she loves. Dasha Tolstikova’s major talent is on full display in this gorgeous and subtly illustrated graphic novel. Key Text Features map Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.7 Analyze how visual and multimedia elements contribute to the meaning, tone, or beauty of a text (e.g., graphic novel, multimedia presentation of fiction, folktale, myth, poem). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.3 Describe how a particular story's or drama's plot unfolds in a series of episodes as well as how the characters respond or change as the plot moves toward a resolution.