A blizzard might ruin a young girl's seventh birthday--her party is canceled when the electricity goes out! But a series of fun surprises and optimistic attutides makes this a birthday to remember!

A blizzard might ruin a young girl's seventh birthday--her party is canceled when the electricity goes out! But a series of fun surprises and optimistic attutides makes this a birthday to remember!

A big snowstorm threatens to spoil a birthday party but also creates some unforeseen opportunities for special fun.

A New York Times Notable Book and the March 2001 selection of Oprah's Book Club® ! Icy Sparks is the sad, funny and transcendent tale of a young girl growing up in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky during the 1950’s. Gwyn Hyman Rubio’s beautifully written first novel revolves around Icy Sparks, an unforgettable heroine in the tradition of Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird or Will Treed in Cold Sassy Tree. At the age of ten, Icy, a bright, curious child orphaned as a baby but raised by adoring grandparents, begins to have strange experiences. Try as she might, her "secrets"—verbal croaks, groans, and physical spasms—keep afflicting her. As an adult, she will find out she has Tourette’s Syndrome, a rare neurological disorder, but for years her behavior is the source of mystery, confusion, and deep humiliation. Narrated by a grown up Icy, the book chronicles a difficult, but ultimately hilarious and heartwarming journey, from her first spasms to her self-acceptance as a young woman. Curious about life beyond the hills, talented, and energetic, Icy learns to cut through all barriers—physical, mental, and spiritual—in order to find community and acceptance. Along her journey, Icy faces the jeers of her classmates as well as the malevolence of her often-ignorant teachers—including Mrs. Stilton, one of the most evil fourth grade teachers ever created by a writer. Called willful by her teachers and "Frog Child" by her schoolmates, she is exiled from the schoolroom and sent to a children’s asylum where it is hoped that the roots of her mysterious behavior can be discovered. Here Icy learns about difference—her own and those who are even more scarred than she. Yet, it isn’t until Icy returns home that she really begins to flower, especially through her friendship with the eccentric and obese Miss Emily, who knows first-hand how it feels to be an outcast in this tightly knit Appalachian community. Under Miss Emily’s tutelage, Icy learns about life’s struggles and rewards, survives her first comical and heartbreaking misadventure with romance, discovers the healing power of her voice when she sings, and ultimately—takes her first steps back into the world. Gwyn Hyman Rubio’s Icy Sparks is a fresh, original, and completely redeeming novel about learning to overcome others’ ignorance and celebrate the differences that make each of us unique.

An exciting new repackage of Jessica Day George's fairy tale adaptation!

The purpose of this book is to give media specialists, teachers and/or teacher helpers and parents a guide to using beginning chapter books to encourage first and second graders to read independently. The book contains in-depth lesson plans for 35 early chapter books. Each lesson contains bibliographic information plus setting, characters, plot, solution, and book summary. Activities for the media specialist to provide schema, prediction, fluency, and information literacy skill instruction is provided as well. Teacher activities included address phonics, phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, and the comprehension strategies of recall, inference, and synthesis. Each book section also features a parent take-home page of extension/enrichment ideas.

When Valerie Sabatino arrives at his home on Oahu, the last thing Harry Pines wants is missing-persons action. There are two reasons why Harry's not the kind of guy who knocks on doors looking for business with his hat in his hand, and the other one is he doesn't wear a hat. But when he learns the missing person is the son of Harry's long-ago cellmate, he has no choice but to strap it on. Helping friends is how Harry pays back. It also doesn't hurt that Valerie is the kind of woman who could bring drool to a statue's chin. Harry's only human. In AN ICE COLD PARADISE Harry and his handy band of friends in Chicago and Hawaii peel back the curtain on a world of runaway girls turned into hookers and of soldiers paying off their gambling debts by stealing firearms. The stolen goods are used to fuel the mean little army of a loony Mormon Fundamentalist named Orrin Massey, who thinks he's the "One Mighty and Strong" right out of the original Mormon playbook. Before it ends, Harry has fallen hard for Valerie and doesn't take kindly to it when Massey kidnaps her for one of his wives. No, not kindly at all. Harry can bring a lot of pain when he gets in a bad mood. If he has to put together a small army of his own and lead them to a mountaintop redoubt in northern Idaho to get Valerie back and settle the score, the degree of difficulty makes it all the sweeter. Harry Pines is the enormously entertaining creation of Terry Holland, who arrives here walking in the footsteps of Hammett, Chandler, Spillane, MacDonald, and Parker.