Серия "Gemma Open Door"

In many ways, the Hamilton children are like any other kids. Eleven-year-old Mia and ten-year-old Will love playing Minecraft, eating pizza, and playing in the yard. But Mia knows that because Will is on the autism spectrum, some things are different for him. For starters, he doesn’t like things to change. Pizza has to be just so crispy, or he won’t eat it. He uses lines from movies to answer most questions. If his toast is too dark, Will could have a total meltdown. When Mom and Dad announce...

The year was 1947. A talented young minor-league baseball player was called up to the majors to join the Brooklyn Dodgers. But this was no ordinary man, nor any simple achievement. This was Jackie Robinson: an all-around star athlete, a U.S. Army veteran—and a black man. Until that year, baseball’s shameful color line had kept African Americans out of the big leagues. Overcoming prejudice, exclusion, and even hatred, Jackie Robinson broke that line and became one of the game’s best players. He...

Growing up without a mother is hard. Worse is having a stepmother who controls Dad. Brittany Myerson is so ready for high school to end. She knows that life is going to get a whole lot better when she gets her driver’s license, the car she’s always wanted and a ticket to college away from home. But her new stepmother has decided what’s good enough for Brittany: a beat-up, mustard-colored piece of junk and enrollment in the local community college. Brittany thinks it can’t get much worse until...

Rollo is tired of humans. Their cities are dirty, and their gizmos are dumb. He knows mankind is wrecking the planet. Rollo’s dream is to escape to the Sierra Nevada Mountains where he can live alone and be free of other people. There’s just one problem with his scheme: Rollo’s hungry human stomach. No matter how much food he carries in his backpack, he always runs out. Inevitably, Rollo has to come back to the “messed-up, man-made world” or starve. All this changes when Rollo finds an old,...

Jessica Vasquez had worked hard to get where she was. Though some in her family had despaired of her future, she put herself through cosmetology school and landed her dream job: overseeing the beauty department for a chain of drugstores. But her fortune abruptly changes. A manager’s daughter, on a mission of her own, puts stolen makeup and perfume in Jessica’s bag. The girl lies to her dad about what happened, and Jessica is fired. It seems that Jessica’s life is over. But is it really? ...

Lisa’s grandfather is turning 100, and her family is gathering from across the country to celebrate at Grandpa Joe’s home—a sprawling apricot orchard in southern California. The orchard is both the heart of their family and a reminder of its past. <br><br>Like many immigrants to America, Joe and his wife, Anna, fled their home country in one of the horrific ethnic cleansings of the twentieth century. They were forced out of Turkey because they were Greek, but they arrived in the New...

Brilliant, homeless and nearly invisible, a young man wanders through Boston, looking for meaning and hope. Extreme mood swings and an unusual outlook on life make it impossible for him to thrive in mainstream society. He finds comfort in laundromats, where he calms himself by watching clothes tumble round and round and round. And in the streets he finds other people like himself, below the radar, laboring to survive. Poignant and buoyant, <i>Spin Cycles</i> is a story of loss,...

Training for adulthood is not for wimps.<br><br> When you are eleven years old, is there anything more humiliating, or bound to cause a fight, than shopping with your mother when your body is in full-throttle warp? Yes, there is: picking out the school-required underwear. Or worse, your mother’s male co-worker shows up at the scene. Or even worse: your brother wants to TALK about it at the dinner table.<br><br> Rites-of-passage are difficult for any young girl, and Jun-li...

Young Jaimie, a high school senior, holes himself up in an isolated cabin on a New Hampshire lake to mourn the tragic death of his girlfriend. He expects to be alone. So who is that swimmer he sees through the mist, out on the lake? What is the wailing he hears as night falls…the cry of the loon? Maybe Jannie had something else in mind when she made him promise they would be together forever. After all, hadn&apos;t they been voted The Couple Most Likely to Stay Together?

In 1878, two years after the Greasy Grass Fight that some called Custer’s Last Stand, U.S. soldiers and government contractors rounded up 270 Arapaho people. From the very young to the very old, they were forced to walk from Fort Robinson in western Nebraska across half of what is now the state of Wyoming. Their destination: the Shoshone Indian Reservation. The new home of the Northern Arapaho was a wilderness, but it was theirs and they were glad. Then came a second and tragic...

On a cold November afternoon in 1833, two wagons are about to cross the dark Mississippi River into Iowa Territory on a tiny boat. Penny Cooper, Nate Tilden, Aunt Sunday, and Jonathan and Ella Butterman are full of questions. Aunt Sunday just wants to know if they’re going to drown. Jonathan and Ella wonder if they will succeed in the new Territory. And Penny and Nate are eager to learn if they are going to be free—to marry, to prosper, to live as free people. <br><br> Aunt Sunday,...

In Japan, nothing is more familiar than the neighborhood post office, with its big red box in front and bright, welcoming windows. The post office has been Siya’s favorite place since she was a child. Now a young woman, Siya is delighted to have a job at the Shindori Post Office in Shizuoka City, even though it is temporary. <br><br> But her boss is a jerk. Born in Japan of a Japanese father and an Indian mother, Siya looks just a little different. The boss won’t believe she is a...

Set in the rugged western United States, <i>American Lion</i> presents true stories of the majestic North American cougar told by people who experienced the mountain lion up close. From the Rock Creek Canyon battle of the killer lion and shepherd dog to the invisible guest in the hay loft, these encounters are terrifying, heartwarming and at all times as thrilling as the native cats themselves.

The American writer Suzanne Kamata had lived in Japan for more than half of her life, yet she had never explored the small nearby islands of the Inland Sea. The islands, first made famous by Donald Richie’s The Inland Sea 50 years ago, are noted for displaying artwork created by prominent, and sometimes curious, international artists and sculptors: Naoshima’s wealth of museums, including one devoted to 007, Yayoi Kusama’s polka dot pumpkins, Kazuo Katase’s blue teacup, and a monster rising out...