The city is a big and busy place for a little puppy-there are tall buildings, honking cars, and all kinds of new friends to make!

Letter of the Week is packed with developmentally appropriate art, language, science, music, movement, and literacy experiences designed to help children make connections with letters. It includes 26 colorful and alphabetically organized units that are designed to let children explore and experience the letters of the alphabet as they increase their phonological awareness and alphabet knowledge. It features 160 pages and includes reproducible activities.

The Hawthorne family has it all: great jobs, a beautiful house in one of the most affluent areas of northern California, and three charming kids with perfectly straight teeth. Then comes eldest daughter Angela’s senior year of high school. Suddenly, everyone is floundering. As Angela writes and rewrites her application for Harvard—her father's alma mater—and struggles to maintain her position as valedictorian, Nora Hawthorne’s career hits a rough patch, taking her away from a newly distracted husband and uncharacteristically anxious younger daughters. And as the secrets everyone has been keeping will come to light, it sets the family on a final collision course that will force them to reevaluate, with humor and heart, the value of achievement.

At a time when literacy has become more of a political issue than a research or pedagogical one, this volume refocuses attention on work with young children that places them at the center of their literacy worlds. Drawing on robust and growing knowledge which is often marginalized because of political and legislative forces, it explores young children’s literacies as inclusive, redefined, and broadened—encompassing technologies, the arts, multiple modalities, and teaching and learning for democracy, cultural sustainability and social justice. Highlighted themes include children’s rights to grow through playful engagements with multiple literacies to interrogate their worlds; adults who expand and inspire children’s consciousness and awareness of others and the world around them; the centrality of meaning making in all aspects of language and literacy development; a deep respect for diversities, including languages, cultures, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status and more; and an expansive understanding of the nature of texts.

Indexes popular fiction series for K-6 readers with groupings based on thematics, consistant setting, or consistant characters. Annotated entries are arranged alphabetically by series name and include author, publisher, date, grade level, genre, and a list of individual titles in the series. Volume is indexed by author, title, and subject/genre and includes appendixes suggesting books for boys, girls, and reluctant/ESL readers.

A proudly Texan cookbook with 125 recipes that blend sophisticated techniques and ingredients with hearty, down-home ranch cooking, from a chef with five successful restaurants. A descendent of cattle ranchers, chef Lou Lambert has created a cookbook that taps into deep Texan pride with cuisine that is neither chuck-wagon chow nor French bistro fare. He melds real West Texas flair with the contemporary fine food that he learned to cook in culinary school, creating big flavor dishes such as Beef Tenderloin with Blue Crab and Bearnaise and Coriander-Roasted Leg of Lamb with Border Chimichurri. If you’re serving up a down-home feast fit for a cattle rancher’s table, try the Achiote-Seared Chickpeas, Spicy Oak-Smoked Chorizo, Wood-Roasted Chicken with Mexican Chocolate Chile Rub, Crispy Wild Boar Ribs with Fresh Plum Barbecue Sauce, or Fried Green Tomatoes with Crab Rémoulade. If urban bistro classics are more your style, you won’t want to miss the Brandied Chicken Liver Terrine with Caramelized Onions, Foie Gras Mousseline, Panfried Pork Cutlet with Parsley-Caper Butter Sauce, and Roasted Beet Salad with Shaved Fennel and Candied Shallot Vinaigrette. The Big Ranch, Big City Cookbook is a lot like the great state of Texas itself—if you don’t already call it home, you’ll want to return again and again.