A funny, heartwarming memoir about saying goodbye to your childhood home, in this case a quirky, one-of-a-kind, family-run miniature golf course in the woods of Wisconsin When June Melby was ten years old, her parents decided on a whim to buy the miniature golf course in the small Wisconsin town where they vacationed every summer. Without any business experience or outside employees, the family sets out to open Tom Thumb Miniature Golf to the public. Naturally, there are bumps along the way. In My Family and Other Hazards, Melby recreates all the squabbling, confusion, and ultimately triumph, of one family's quest to build something together, and brings to life the joys of one of America's favorite pastimes. In sharp, funny prose, we get the hazards that taunted players at each hole, and the dedication and hard work that went into each one's creation. All the familiar delights of summer are here—snowcones and popcorn and long days spent with people you love. Melby's relationship with the course is love-hate from the beginning, given the summer's freedom it robs her of, but when her parents decide to sell the course years later, her panicked reaction surprises even her. Now an adult living in Hollywood, having flown the Midwest long ago, she flies back to the course to help run it before the sale goes through, wondering if she should try to stop it. As the clock ticks, she reflects on what the course meant to her both as a child and an adult, the simpler era that it represents, and the particular pains of losing your childhood home, even years after you've left it.

Whenever a memoirist gives a reading, someone in the audience is sure to ask: How did your family react? Revisiting our pasts and exploring our experiences, we often reveal more of our nearest and dearest than they might prefer. This volume navigates the emotional and literary minefields that any writer of family stories or secrets must travel when depicting private lives for public consumption. Essays by twenty-five memoirists, including Faith Adiele, Alison Bechdel, Jill Christman, Judith Ortiz Cofer, Rigoberto González, Robin Hemley, Dinty W. Moore, Bich Minh Nguyen, and Mimi Schwartz, explore the fraught territory of family history told from one perspective, which, from another angle in the family drama, might appear quite different indeed. In her introduction to this book, Joy Castro, herself a memoirist, explores the ethical dilemmas of writing about family and offers practical strategies for this tricky but necessary subject. A sustained and eminently readable lesson in the craft of memoir, Family Trouble serves as a practical guide for writers to find their own version of the truth while still respecting family boundaries.

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.

An award-winning artist offers a child's-eye look at such idiomatic expressions as ants in your pants and cat got your tongue, providing a unique and sympathetic perspective on a boy's first day of school. Full color.

This monograph provides valuable lessons in building disaster resilience for rural communities and beyond. With a focus on Florida, the authors present a comprehensive review of the current debates surrounding the study of resilience, from federal frameworks, state plans and local initiatives. They also review evaluation tools and feature first-hand accounts of county emergency managers as well as non-profit and community groups on key issues, including perspectives on vulnerable groups such as the elderly, children and farm workers. Readers will find insightful answers to such questions as: How can the concept of resilience be used as a framework to investigate the conditions that lead to stronger, more sustainable communities? What factors account for the variation across jurisdictions and geographic units in the ability to respond to and recover from a disaster? How does the recovery process impact the social, political and economic institutions of the stricken communities? How do communities, especially rural ones, collaborate with multiple stakeholders (local, regional, state, national) during the transition from recovery to resilience? Can the collaborative nature of disaster recovery help build resilient communities?. The primary audiences of this book are scholars in emergency and crisis management, planning and policy, disaster response and recovery, disaster sociology and environmental management and policy. This book can also be used as a textbook in graduate and advanced undergraduate programs / courses on disaster management, disaster studies, emergency and crisis management, environmental policy and management and public policy and administration.

Biological and Environmental Hazards, Risks, and Disasters, Second Edition provides an integrated look at major impacts to the Earth's biosphere caused by diseases, algal blooms, insects, animals, species extinction, deforestation, land degradation, and comet and asteroid strikes, with important implications for humans. This second edition from Elsevier's Hazards and Disasters Series incorporates perspectives from the natural and social sciences to offer in-depth coverage of threats from microscopic organisms to celestial objects and their potential impacts. Contributions from expert biological, health, ecological, environmental, wildlife, physical, and health scientists, readers will gain valuable insights on damages, causality, economic impacts, preparedness, and mitigation. - Provides inter- and multi-disciplinary research accessible to both specialists and non-specialists - Includes newly added chapters on emerging hazards and risks to earth's ecosystems (land conversion and habitat loss) and human health (spread of diseases) - Contains full-color tables, maps, diagrams, illustrations, and photographs of hazardous processes