How do you live your life if your past is based on a lie? Find out in this “satisfied and moving story” (Publishers Weekly, starred review) in both verse and prose from #1 New York Times bestselling author Ellen Hopkins. For as long as she can remember, it’s been just Ariel and Dad. Ariel’s mom disappeared when she was a baby. Dad says home is wherever the two of them are, but Ariel is now seventeen and after years of new apartments, new schools, and new faces, all she wants is to put down some roots. Complicating things are Monica and Gabe, both of whom have stirred a different kind of desire. Maya’s a teenager who’s run from an abusive mother right into the arms of an older man she thinks she can trust. But now she’s isolated with a baby on the way, and life’s getting more complicated than Maya ever could have imagined. Ariel and Maya’s lives collide unexpectedly when Ariel’s mother shows up out of the blue with wild accusations: Ariel wasn’t abandoned. Her father kidnapped her fourteen years ago. In bestselling author Ellen Hopkins’s deft hands, Ariel’s emotionally charged journey to find out the truth of who she really is balances beautifully with Maya’s story of loss and redemption. This is a memorable portrait of two young women trying to make sense of their lives and coming face to face with themselves—for both the last and the very first time.

A collection of poems written by Julien, an ordained minister, with translation to Espanol by Diana.

On September 29, 1927, Cuban soprano Rita Montaner walked onto the stage of Havana's Teatro Regina, her features obscured under a mask of blackened glycerin and her body clad in the tight pants, boots, and riding jacket of a coachman. Standing alongside a gilded carriage and a live horse, the blackfaced, cross-dressed actress sang the premiere of Eliseo Grenet's tango-congo, "Ay Mama Ines." The crowd went wild. Montaner's performance cemented "Ay Mama Ines" as one of the classics in the Cuban repertoire, but more importantly, the premiere heralded the birth of the Cuban zarzuela, a new genre of music theater that over the next fifteen years transformed popular entertainment on the island. Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havana's Lyric Stage marks the first comprehensive study of the Cuban zarzuela, a Spanish-language light opera with spoken dialogue that originated in Spain but flourished in Havana during the early twentieth century. Created by musicians and managers to fill a growing demand for family entertainment, the zarzuela evidenced the emerging economic and cultural power of Cuba's white female bourgeoisie to influence the entertainment industry. Susan Thomas explores zarzuela's function as a pedagogical tool, through which composers, librettists, and business managers hoped to control their troupes and audiences by presenting desirable and problematic images of both feminine and masculine identities. Zarzuela was, Thomas explains, "anti-feminist but pro-feminine, its plots focusing on female protagonists and its musical scores showcasing the female voice." Focusing on character types such as the mulata, the negrito, and the ingenue, Thomas uncovers the zarzuela's richly textured relationship to social constructs of race, class, and especially gender.

English Spanish Bilingual children's book. Perfect for kids learning English or Spanish as their second language. It's time for bed, but Alice doesn't want to go to sleep just yet. By going through her bedtime routine, Mom calms her daughter down by reminding her of all the wonderful things they did together that evening. Written in a soft and soothing manner, this book shows the warm and loving relationship between Alice and her mom, while preparing young readers for a good night's sleep.

Literature and philosophy what are these magical fantasies, so superior and everlasting. Without love or being loved what could be its discipline. Everything has roots for such a strong word, and what are roots if they don't create something new and particular, something like a whole new topic or maybe a story, a tale, whatever you want to call it. But if we look deeper we also know we can name it like most things around us, we want to feel that patronage that ownership, possession; we want it all and all at once. Like music, poetry is really alike it connects us, and even if we weren't to meet each other face to face, we might touch the lyrics of a track that will somewhat be said or expressed the same exact way. How crazy is to feel that we are able to do that and not crossing our minds in such well coexisting thought. Everybody has a story to tell at the end of the day to be exact, but I hope you all really make it a legend at the moment of relating it. To me this is my art and like I said it: "my coffee and creamer", but when you get such feeling as the one most people say: "I feel like there is butterflies in my stomach", is exactly how I truly felt at the moment I laid eyes on whom I believe is my soulmate. The joy, pride and dime of my days, besides the other ones we get daily and of course differently. Showing me that miracles do exist, and being a representation of love at first sight. You all might think I'm crazy and since I've known her for a year, or even more, but once you get a hold of what bathing and drowning in a sea of love is, it takes you to higher heights and it stands it up high being held by a strong branch just with such background as philosophy and literature are, revolutionizing a new concept art. Personally I've come to the understanding at such age that we all not love the same way, but when we do something for somebody and I don't know maybe feel perhaps differently after doing so, how did the impact of that person impacted you. In reality there is questions that we will never have meaning to, but know that love always answers over anything. Well that if legitimately and sincere will adhere to such scenario, I don't wanna make a scene; I wanna make a show that helps you reconstruct in your mind and heart as you read, something livid that perhaps when you are done reading you didn't expect to gain, cuz at the end every book read will be undertaken by its raw meaning, the one the author needed you to see and not seek. That's how poetry I think its influenced my life, it got me closer to appreciate what I have more than anything in the world, and if I was to let go I'll make a fool of myself; so it's not a test its a re-attempt to build that lost trust you've lost in many, and will make you a true believer that there is people eloquent enough to look for you even at the distance of a page, connecting us no matter how much time might roll by and leaving a legacy that I've been attempting to leave behind ever since the moment of my very birth.

Origanal poetry written by Julian, an ordained minister, with translation to espanol by Diana.