Imagine your whole day lived backward, from beginning to end. When you got up, you’d put on your jacket, then your shirt and pants, and over those your underwear, because after all, backward is backward, and on a backward day backward is the way everything has to be. You’d walk downstairs backward and sit on your chair backward with your back to the table, and when your parents greeted you in the morning you’d say, of course, “Good night.” But how long can a backward day go on? Just long enough for a smart kid to reverse the spell he’s cast on the whole household and return everything to normal. The Backward Day, a delightfully stylish picture book by the Caldecott Prize–winning team of Marc Simont and Ruth Krauss, brings to life a humorous and engaging reversal of ordinary reality that will enchant young children, as well parents.

From beloved and bestselling author Lauren Myracle comes the emotional conclusion to the Wishing Day trilogy, perfect for fans of Kate DiCamillo and Ingrid Law. Now that her sisters Natasha and Darya have had their turn, Ava Blok finally gets her Wishing Day. But after seeing the unintended consequences of the wishes her sisters made, she’s not sure what to wish for. The only thing she’s certain of is that it’s her job to set things right. Hopeful that she can put her broken family back together, and eager to prove her pessimistic older sisters wrong, Ava realizes that fixing the future means changing the past. Will the journey her wishes take her on end up costing her everything?

When Josh's mother dies in a phobia-induced car crash, she leaves two questions for her grieving family: how did a snake get into her car and how do you mourn with no faith to guide you? Twelve-year-old Josh is left alone to find the answers. His father is building a time machine. His four-year-old brother's closest friend is a plastic Power Ranger. His psychiatrist offers nothing more than a blank journal and platitudes. Isolated by grief in a home where every day is pajama day, Josh makes death his research project. He tests the mourning practices of religions he doesn't believe in. He tries to mend his little brother's shattered heart. He observes, records and waits—for his life to feel normal, for his mother's death to make sense, for his father to come out of the basement. His observations, recorded in a series of journal entries, are funny, smart, insightful—and heartbreaking. His conclusions about the nature of love, loss, grief and the space-time continuum are nothing less than life-changing.

After showcasing her talent as the lead in her high schools production of Grease, Tasha Schuh began to dream of a career in theater. No one knew that the stage itself would steal her dreamand almost her lifeduring a rehearsal for the next big show. Just days before her opening night performance in The Wizard of Oz, sixteen-year-old Tasha took one step backward and fell sixteen feet through a trap door. On that day, Nov. 11, 1997, she landed on the concrete floor of the historic Sheldon Theater, breaking her neck, crushing her spinal cord, and fracturing her skull. She would never walk again. For the next three days, Tasha prepared for a surgery that would at best leave her a C-5 quadriplegic. Post-op complications turned Tashas struggle and ultimate triumph into an unbelievable journey. From loss and grief to self-discovery and achievement, Tashas faith, resilience, and honesty have allowed her to leave the old Tasha behind while she confronts the new Tashas life from a state of the art wheelchair. Discover Tashas remarkable spirit in My Last Step Backward, a poignant memoir that seeks to inspire you to welcome adversity and face your own trap door of opportunity.

From Pulitzer Prize finalist Ben Montgomery, the story of a Texas man who, during the Great Depression, walked around the world -- backwards. Like most Americans at the time, Plennie Wingo was hit hard by the effects of the Great Depression. When the bank foreclosed on his small restaurant in Abilene, he found himself suddenly penniless with nowhere left to turn. After months of struggling to feed his family on wages he earned digging ditches in the Texas sun, Plennie decided it was time to do something extraordinary -- something to resurrect the spirit of adventure and optimism he felt he'd lost. He decided to walk around the world -- backwards. In The Man Who Walked Backward, Pulitzer Prize finalist Ben Montgomery charts Plennie's backwards trek across the America that gave rise to Woody Guthrie, John Steinbeck, and the New Deal. With the Dust Bowl and Great Depression as a backdrop, Montgomery follows Plennie across the Atlantic through Germany, Turkey, and beyond, and details the daring physical feats, grueling hardships, comical misadventures, and hostile foreign police he encountered along the way. A remarkable and quirky slice of Americana, The Man Who Walked Backward paints a rich and vibrant portrait of a jaw-dropping period of history.

What if it is death that teaches us how to truly live? Keeping the end in mind shapes how we live our lives in the here and now. Living life backward means taking the one thing in our future that is certain—death—and letting that inform our journey before we get there. Looking to the book of Ecclesiastes for wisdom, Living Life Backward was written to shake up our expectations and priorities for what it means to live "the good life." Considering the reality of death helps us pay attention to our limitations as human beings and receive life as a wondrous gift from God—freeing us to live wisely, generously, and faithfully for God's glory and the good of his world.