From an acclaimed short-story writer, a blazingly intelligent and humorous debut novel that is set in New Orleans and tells the story of two strangers whose paths first cross on the remarkable banks of the Mississippi. Cleo, a Canadian on holiday in New Orleans, is sitting alone in the French Quarter late one night, dreamily watching the river’s lazy progress. Suddenly, a woman clad in full evening dress, from rhinestone tiara to high heels, takes a running leap off the wharf into the Mississippi. Cleo watches, astonished, then turns and runs, mistakenly assuming the jumper is dead — a suicide. But Madeline, it turns out, is not bent on suicide. She is irresistibly drawn to water, as is Cleo, who was conceived during the great flood in Florence in 1966. Perhaps it is this shared obsession with the murky depths that fuels Cleo’s determination to find Madeline. She pounds the quaint streets of New Orleans, city of cheap bourbon, rich turtle soup, the scent of magnolias and A Streetcar Named Desire. Spelling Mississippi is filled with all the bristling energy of Fall on Your Knees. Told with great humour and affection, it is a seductive, liberating story about ties that bind and those that simply restrain, and a lesson not in spelling but forgiveness.

ADHD, ADD, Dyslexia, Learning Styles, Learning Disabilities Introduces the mainstream student and educator to the world of the child who struggles academically. The main character discovers her father is dyslexic, as is one of her classmates-- and she tries to make sense of it.

This upbeat addition to the Adventures of Everyday Geniuses series offers an encouraging insight into the struggles and triumphs of someone with dyslexia. When looking for books about dyslexia for kids, If You're So Smart, How Come You Can't Spell Mississippi is a great way to start conversations about dyslexia both at home and in the classroom. Katie always thought her dad was smart—he is one of the busiest attorneys in town! People are always asking him for advice. She has been a bit confused ever since asking him for help with her weekly spelling list. How can her very smart dad struggle with one of her spelling words? This definitely didn't make sense. The word Mississippi has changed everything... This growth mindset picture book employs a frank and thoughtful approach to dyslexia so that readers can explore the various ways people learn and recognize that some difficulties do not have to be restrictions on what a person can achieve. The Adventures of Everyday Geniuses Series: Free Association Where My Mind Goes During Science Class Stacey Coolidge Fancy-Smancy Cursive Handwriting Mrs. Gorski I Think I Have the Wiggle Fidgets If You're So Smart, How Come You Can't Spell Mississippi Last to Finish, A Story About the Smartest Boy in Math Class Keep Your Eye on the Prize The Adventures of Everyday Geniuses series is meant to demonstrate various forms of learning, creativity, and intelligence. Each book introduces a realistic example of triumph over difficulty in a positive, humorous way that readers of all ages will enjoy! "Challenges in reading and spelling are often accompanied by special abilities in areas like complex pattern recognition and spatial reasoning. If You're So Smart How Come You Can't Spell Mississippi? is a fantastic way of bringing this information to the many smart children who find reading and spelling especially difficult—especially to those who are beginning to doubt their own potential." —Drs. Brock (M.D., M.A.) and Fernette (M.D.) Eides, authors of The Mislabeled Child and founders of the Eide Neurolearning Clinic. Praise for the series: "This is a wonderful book series. Each story shows children that success is about effort and determination, that problems need not derail them, and that adults can understand their worries and struggles. My research demonstrates that these lessons are essential for children." —Dr. Carol S. Dweck

Raised under the racial segregation that kept her family's southern country hotel afloat, Norma Watkins grows up listening at doors, trying to penetrate the secrets and silences of the black help and of her parents' marriage. Groomed to be an ornament to white patriarchy, she sees herself failing at the ideal of becoming a southern lady. The Last Resort, her compelling memoir, begins in childhood at Allison's Wells, a popular Mississippi spa for proper white people, run by her aunt. Life at the rambling hotel seems like paradise. Yet young Norma wonders at a caste system that has colored people cooking every meal while forbidding their sitting with whites to eat. Once integration is court-mandated, her beloved father becomes a stalwart captain in defense of Jim Crow as a counselor to fiery, segregationist Governor Ross Barnett. His daughter flounders, looking for escape. A fine house, wonderful children, and a successful husband do not compensate for the shock of Mississippi's brutal response to change, daily made manifest by the men in her home. A sexually bleak marriage only emphasizes a growing emotional emptiness. When a civil rights lawyer offers love and escape, does a good southern lady dare leave her home state and closed society behind? With humor and heartbreak, The Last Resort conveys at once the idyllic charm and the impossible compromises of a lost way of life.

As the fiftieth anniversary approaches, there's a renewed interest in this infamous 1955 murder case, which made a lasting mark on American culture, as well as the future Civil Rights Movement. Chris Crowe's IRA Award-winning novel and his gripping, photo-illustrated nonfiction work are currently the only books on the teenager's murder written for young adults.

Kevin Sessums recounts his childhood and adolescence in the South, explaining how he coped with being different from the other boys in the region and how he refused to accept their labels and discriminations.

A cabin boy in 1839 could steal cards and cheat the boys at eleven stock a deck at fourteen bested soldiers on the Rio Grande during the Mexican war won hundreds of thousands from paymasters, cotton buyers, defaulters and thieves fought more rough and tum