Offers an inventive program to help readers reconstruct essential elements of their forgotten education, sharing techniques on vocabulary, reading comprehension, and mathematics

Michael L. Printz Honor Book Robert F. Sibert Informational Honor Book Boston Globe/Horn Book Nonfiction Honor Book Arnold Adoff Poetry Award for Teens Six Starred Reviews—★Booklist ★BCCB ★The Horn Book ★Publishers Weekly ★School Library Connection ★Shelf Awareness A Booklist Best Book for Youth * A BCCB Blue Ribbon * A Horn Book Fanfare Book * A Shelf Awareness Best Children's Book * Recommended on NPR's "Morning Edition" by Kwame Alexander "This powerful story, told with the music of poetry and the blade of truth, will help your heart grow."–Laurie Halse Anderson, author of Speak and Shout "[A] testimony and a triumph."–Jason Reynolds, author of Long Way Down In her own voice, acclaimed author and poet Nikki Grimes explores the truth of a harrowing childhood in a compelling and moving memoir in verse. Growing up with a mother suffering from paranoid schizophrenia and a mostly absent father, Nikki Grimes found herself terrorized by babysitters, shunted from foster family to foster family, and preyed upon by those she trusted. At the age of six, she poured her pain onto a piece of paper late one night - and discovered the magic and impact of writing. For many years, Nikki's notebooks were her most enduing companions. In this accessible and inspiring memoir that will resonate with young readers and adults alike, Nikki shows how the power of those words helped her conquer the hazards - ordinary and extraordinary - of her life.

Do you know why we are able to see light and hear sound? What is the Earth made of? How does the body produce energy? And, most important, does any of this matter? In I Used to Know That: Science, Marianne Taylor will answer those questions and more and will tell you why the answers are vital to us and to the scientists working on the cutting edge of scientific research. In this book, you will learn about: Physics-Energy and Electricity: How electricity is generated; how heat moves from one place to another; the relationship between electricity and magnetismForces: The four fundamental forces; the origins of the universe; the composition and behavior of planets, stars and galaxies; the basic laws of mechanical physics Waves, Radiation and Space: How waves behave and how they affect us; the electromagnetic spectrum; radioactivity Chemistry-The Periodic Table: How to read the table; how atoms work; chemical bonds and reactionsFuels, Air and Pollution: Chemicals, both helpful and dangerous, in the air; crude oil and its useful chemicals; live cycle assessments Metals: The Earth’s structure; metals and alloys; construction materials Organic Chemistry: Natural polymers and their usefulness; nutrition; which chemicals are harmful Biology-Human (and Other) Bodies: The body’s systems-circulatory, skeletal, muscular, nervous, digestive, reproductive, respiratory and sensoryCell Biology: The structure of a cell; how photosynthesis works; what hormones do Evolution and Environment Ecology: The origins of life; how the eukaryotic cell evolved; mutation and natural selection; population, predation and extinction Genetics: what chromosomes are; how you inherit genetic traits; reproduction and cloning I Used to Know That: Science is a necessary read for anyone who wants to understand the modern scientific world and how the general principles of physics, chemistry, and biology affect our everyday lives.

A New York Times Notable Book A Daily Beast Best Book of the Year A Huffington Post Best Book of the Year From elementary school on, Walter Kirn knew how to stay at the top of his class: He clapped erasers, memorized answer keys, and parroted his teachers’ pet theories. But when he launched himself eastward to an Ivy League university, Kirn discovered that the temple of higher learning he had expected was instead just another arena for more gamesmanship, snobbery, and social climbing. In this whip-smart memoir of kissing-up, cramming, and competition, Lost in the Meritocracy reckons the costs of an educational system where the point is simply to keep accumulating points and never to look back—or within.

The New York Times bestselling tour of the cosmos from three of today's leading astrophysicists Welcome to the Universe is a personal guided tour of the cosmos by three of today's leading astrophysicists. Inspired by the enormously popular introductory astronomy course that Neil deGrasse Tyson, Michael A. Strauss, and J. Richard Gott taught together at Princeton, this book covers it all—from planets, stars, and galaxies to black holes, wormholes, and time travel. Describing the latest discoveries in astrophysics, the informative and entertaining narrative propels you from our home solar system to the outermost frontiers of space. How do stars live and die? Why did Pluto lose its planetary status? What are the prospects of intelligent life elsewhere in the universe? How did the universe begin? Why is it expanding and why is its expansion accelerating? Is our universe alone or part of an infinite multiverse? Answering these and many other questions, the authors open your eyes to the wonders of the cosmos, sharing their knowledge of how the universe works. Breathtaking in scope and stunningly illustrated throughout, Welcome to the Universe is for those who hunger for insights into our evolving universe that only world-class astrophysicists can provide.

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

Arguing against the tougher standards rhetoric that marks the current education debate, the author of No Contest and Punished by Rewards writes that such tactics squeeze the pleasure out of learning. Reprint.