The new installment in the popular Big Book series connects young readers from around the world by emphasizing that we all belong to the same planet Earth. The Big Book of Belonging is a timely celebration of all the ways that humans are connected to life on planet Earth. With children at the heart of every beautifully illustrated spread, this book draws parallels between the way humans, plants, and animals live and behave. We all breathe the same air and take warmth from the same sun, we grow, we adapt to the seasons, and we live together in family groups. Readers will be fascinated to learn that instead of using words to communicate, fava beans send chemical messages through their roots, Caribbean reef squid send warnings of danger and even declarations of love by changing color, and that adorable big-eyed primates called tarsiers make calls to one another over the noise of the rainforest that are too high-pitched for predators to hear. By putting children at the heart of the book’s concept, author Yuval Zommer unites readers of the Big Book series from all corners of the world under one banner—of belonging to planet Earth. The book’s gentle message of caring for nature will inspire readers of all ages and encourage a new generation of environmentalists to flourish.

Vonnie Roudette has created a seminal work of Caribbean Nature writings revealing creative messages for community transformation through daily observation. Compiled largely from five-minute weekly radio commentaries that were aired in St. Vincent and the Grenadines on the WEFM Radio Viewpoint program between June 2004-June 2009, The Nature of Belonging is a Collection of Short Essays that are beautifully interspersed with Roudette's poetic drawings and meditations on Nature. Through The Nature of Belonging, Roudette seeks to facilitate personal healing from social and cultural programming through the practical application of resilient natural wisdom that nurtures cooperative relationships within our personal and working lives, community and natural environment. "There is a dialogue in these pages between two or more ways of thinking. That is the point of the book: to share in real stories the Roudette compassion for life, for nature, for people who can become open to others. These essays are the testimony of an urgent, loving spirit." - Oscar Allen, author, social commentator. "It requires a great combination of skills to produce a work of such range of themes and quality of perception. Be the subject Vincentian architecture, carnival, the role of the landscape in shaping consciousness, Caribbean regional cuisine and the art of healthy living: Ms. Roudette's meditations provide us with a manual of instruction for teachers and learners with an interest in the art of seeing and listening. This translation of weekly broadcasts on St. Vincent and the Grenadines radio into an anthology of essays bears the mark of editorial distinction which could only have been achieved by a creative teacher for whom "there is great satisfaction in being able to step back and see something not only continue but continue to grow." -George Lamming, scholar, author, critic.

The feeling of belonging is something that everyone strives for, and this book teaches kids how to incorporate that feeling into their lives. It tackles what it's like when you feel like you belong to a group or family or team, and what it's like when you don't. It addresses what it feels like when you don't fit in, or when others don't want you around. This book teaches kids how to belong to themselves and how that helps them belong anywhere.

* Winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award * Silver Medal Society of Illustrators * * Named a Best Book of the Year by The New York Times, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, NPR, Comics Beat, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Kirkus Reviews, and Library Journal This “ingenious reckoning with the past” (The New York Times), by award-winning artist Nora Krug investigates the hidden truths of her family’s wartime history in Nazi Germany. Nora Krug was born decades after the fall of the Nazi regime, but the Second World War cast a long shadow over her childhood and youth in the city of Karlsruhe, Germany. Yet she knew little about her own family’s involvement; though all four grandparents lived through the war, they never spoke of it. After twelve years in the US, Krug realizes that living abroad has only intensified her need to ask the questions she didn’t dare to as a child. Returning to Germany, she visits archives, conducts research, and interviews family members, uncovering in the process the stories of her maternal grandfather, a driving teacher in Karlsruhe during the war, and her father’s brother Franz-Karl, who died as a teenage SS soldier. In this extraordinary quest, “Krug erases the boundaries between comics, scrapbooking, and collage as she endeavors to make sense of 20th-century history, the Holocaust, her German heritage, and her family's place in it all” (The Boston Globe). A highly inventive, “thoughtful, engrossing” (Minneapolis Star-Tribune) graphic memoir, Belonging “packs the power of Alison Bechdel’s Fun Home and David Small’s Stitches” (NPR.org).

What does it mean to call a place home? Who is allowed to become a member of a community? When can we say that we truly belong? These are some of the questions of place and belonging that renowned cultural critic bell hooks examines in her new book, Belonging: A Culture of Place. Traversing past and present, Belonging charts a cyclical journey in which hooks moves from place to place, from country to city and back again, only to end where she began--her old Kentucky home. hooks has written provocatively about race, gender, and class; and in this book she turns her attention to focus on issues of land and land ownership. Reflecting on the fact that 90% of all black people lived in the agrarian South before mass migration to northern cities in the early 1900s, she writes about black farmers, about black folks who have been committed both in the past and in the present to local food production, to being organic, and to finding solace in nature. Naturally, it would be impossible to contemplate these issues without thinking about the politics of race and class. Reflecting on the racism that continues to find expression in the world of real estate, she writes about segregation in housing and economic racialized zoning. In these critical essays, hooks finds surprising connections that link of the environment and sustainability to the politics of race and class that reach far beyond Kentucky. With characteristic insight and honesty, Belonging offers a remarkable vision of a world where all people--wherever they may call home--can live fully and well, where everyone can belong.

Belonging to the Earth is a collection of personal insights, stories of journeys and rituals, community events and conversations between activists, First Nations community leaders, and those practicing nature spirituality. Each part of the book offers thoughtful and personal perspectives about connecting with the land, paying respect to ancestral traditions, Indigenous cultures and First Nations people, and finding ways to practice nature spirituality with integrity. Each part of the journey of the book explores how we can all come together to work for a better future and develop a greater understanding of how we belong to the Earth.

Vonnie Roudette has created a seminal work of Caribbean Nature writings revealing creative messages for community transformation through daily observation. Compiled largely from five-minute weekly radio commentaries that were aired in St. Vincent and the Grenadines on the WEFM Radio Viewpoint program between June 2004-June 2009, The Nature of Belonging is a Collection of Short Essays that are beautifully interspersed with Roudettes poetic drawings and meditations on Nature. Through The Nature of Belonging, Roudette seeks to facilitate personal healing from social and cultural programming through the practical application of resilient natural wisdom that nurtures cooperative relationships within our personal and working lives, community and natural environment. There is a dialogue in these pages between two or more ways of thinking. That is the point of the book: to share in real stories the Roudette compassion for life, for nature, for people who can become open to others. These essays are the testimony of an urgent, loving spirit. - Oscar Allen, author, social commentator. It requires a great combination of skills to produce a work of such range of themes and quality of perception. Be the subject Vincentian architecture, carnival, the role of the landscape in shaping consciousness, Caribbean regional cuisine and the art of healthy living: Ms. Roudettes meditations provide us with a manual of instruction for teachers and learners with an interest in the art of seeing and listening. This translation of weekly broadcasts on St. Vincent and the Grenadines radio into an anthology of essays bears the mark of editorial distinction which could only have been achieved by a creative teacher for whom there is great satisfaction in being able to step back and see something not only continue but continue to grow. -George Lamming, scholar, author, critic.