Sofia, an immigrant from Mexico who knows no English, finds herself unable to keep up in class until her teacher uses a poster of a shark to help her learn English during a class unit on marine life.

Hai Long is a teenager living in the Chinese city of Dalian. It's the year of the SARS epidemic in China. This is a modern China that's eye-catchingly contemporary. Hai Long and his mates drink Coca-Cola and eat American fast food. They watch American NBA basketball on television and argue whether Michael Jordan is the greatest player ever. They go to English language lessons and hilariously mock Karl, their hopelessly naïve Canadian teacher, who drinks too much beer and is just dying to get away to Thai beaches to hang out with German babes. This is also the year in which Hai Long leaves school to learn the unlikely trade of his uncle. 'Uncle' has many books, but he's actually a highly successful professional pick-pocket who specialises in robbing dazed foreigners - Koreans and Japanese as well as Europeans - and makes special trips to Beijing for the purpose. As we meet a series of colourful characters in Hai Long's life and hang out with him and his mates, we also watch the teenager being trained in the ways of the pick-pocket. This is a sophisticated story of China's new generation severing ties with their cultural past, and rich with a fascinating array of colourful characters who frequent their inner-city apartment block - from Gambler Dang, a high stakes Ma Jiang player, to Fish, a peasant from the countryside and an unlikely friend, and finally Uncle, whose shadowy occupation exerts an irresistible pull on Hai Long's life . . . An accessible yet deceptively clever novel from an electric new voice.

Illuminating issues of diversity at the intersection of rural education and multilingual learners (ML) in the United States, this edited volume brings forth new research that captures the importance of place and rurality in the work of educators who serve multilingual learners and their families. The six chapters in this book demonstrate that education for teachers, leaders and staff, professional development programs, and government-funded projects aimed to improve rural education need to begin with three interrelated, multifaceted principles. The first principle is the need to center place and rurality as essential factors that affect education for all educators, students, and families who live, work, and attend schools in rural communities. Second, educators must humanize multilingual students, their families, and their cultures in ways that go beyond merely acknowledging their presence – they must deeply see and understand the lives and (hi)stories of the multilingual students and families that they serve in their rural schools. Finally, the third principle involves identifying multilingual resources for ML students and their families. Given the persistent inequities in access to resources and opportunities that rural ML students and families face, this last principle requires careful planning, networking, and advocating in ways that can truly effectuate change. Contributors are: Jioanna Carjuzaa, Maria R. Coady, Paula Golombek, Shuzhan Li, Kristin Kline Liu, Nidza V. Marichal, Charity Funfe Tatah Mentan, Kym O’Donnell, Stephanie Oudghiri, Darrell Peterson, Sonja Phillips, Jenelle Reeves and Yi-Chen Wu.

Barbara Wilson is a widow and owner of the Double-T Bar Ranch in Montana living comfortably with her daughter and two loving grandchildren. The demands of running a ranch and maintaining her reputation keep her occupied, but she longs for something more. Mike Watson is a retired widower living alone in northern Illinois. Trapped by his grief and hopelessness since his wife died of cancer, he has chosen to avoid social interactions, which worries his grown children. One day while tinkering with his van, the answer comes to him: he decides then and there to write a book and set it in the West. Mike takes a life-changing trip from home to the wilds of Montana to do research for the book and meet the locals. There, a chance encounter with Barbara changes both of their lives. When the lives of these two wounded strangers suddenly align, a book project, a picnic, a storm, a rock, and secrets form the elements that bring them together. Their two families must now learn to overcome disappointment and the many obstacles that circumstance places in the path to hope. For two lost souls in the process of healing broken hearts, nothing is sweeter than the hope of new love.