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Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube: Chasing Fear and Finding Home in the Great White North
By Blair Braverman. 2016
A rich and revelatory memoir of a young woman reclaiming her courage in the stark landscapes of the north.By the…
time Blair Braverman was eighteen, she had left her home in California, moved to arctic Norway to learn to drive sled dogs, and found work as a tour guide on a glacier in Alaska. Determined to carve out a life as a “tough girl”—a young woman who confronts danger without apology—she slowly developed the strength and resilience the landscape demanded of her. By turns funny and sobering, bold and tender, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube brilliantly recounts Braverman’s adventures in Norway and Alaska. Settling into her new surroundings, Braverman was often terrified that she would lose control of her dog team and crash her sled, or be attacked by a polar bear, or get lost on the tundra. Above all, she worried that, unlike the other, gutsier people alongside her, she wasn’t cut out for life on the frontier. But no matter how out of place she felt, one thing was clear: she was hooked on the North. On the brink of adulthood, Braverman was determined to prove that her fears did not define her—and so she resolved to embrace the wilderness and make it her own. Assured, honest, and lyrical, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube paints a powerful portrait of self-reliance in the face of extraordinary circumstance. Braverman endures physical exhaustion, survives being buried alive in an ice cave, and drives her dogs through a whiteout blizzard to escape crooked police. Through it all, she grapples with love and violence—navigating a grievous relationship with a fellow musher, and adapting to the expectations of her Norwegian neighbors—as she negotiates the complex demands of being a young woman in a man’s land.Weaving fast-paced adventure writing and ethnographic journalism with elegantly wrought reflections on identity, Welcome to the Goddamn Ice Cube captures the triumphs and the perils of Braverman’s journey to self-discovery and independence in a landscape that is as beautiful as it is unforgiving.The Wilderness Family
By Kobie Kruger. 2001
When Kobie Krüger, her game-ranger husband and their three young daughters moved to one of the most isolated corners of…
the world - a remote ranger station in the Mahlangeni region of South Africa's vast Kruger National Park - she might have worried that she would become engulfed with loneliness and boredom. Yet, for Kobie and her family, the seventeen years spent in this spectacularly beautiful park proved to be the most magical - and occasionally the most hair-raising - of their lives.Kobie recounts their enchanting adventures and extraordinary experiences in this vast reserve - a place where, bathed in golden sunlight, hippos basked in the glittering waters of the Letaba River, storks and herons perched along the shoreline, and fruit bats hung in the sausage trees.But as the Krugers settled in, they discovered that not all was peace and harmony. They soon became accustomed to living with the unexpected: the sneaky hyenas who stole blankets and cooking pots, the sinister-looking pythons that slithered into the house, and the usually placid elephants who grew foul-tempered in the violent heat of the summer. And one terrible day, a lion attacked Kobus in the bush and nearly killed him.Yet nothing prepared the Krugers for their greatest adventure of all, the raising of an orphaned prince, a lion cub who, when they found him, was only a few days old and on the verge of death. Reared on a cocktail of love and bottles of fat-enriched milk, Leo soon became an affectionate, rambunctious and adored member of the fmaily. It is the rearing of this young king, and the hilarious endeavours to teach him to become a 'real' lion who could survive with his own kind in the wild, that lie at the heart of this endearing memoir. It is a memoir of a magical place and time that can never be recaptured.What the **** is Normal?!
By Francesca Martinez. 2014
If you grow up in a world where wrinkles are practically illegal, going bald is cause for a mental breakdown,…
and women over size zero are encouraged to shoot themselves (immediately), what the hell do you do if you’re, gasp … DISABLED? Whatever body you’re born into, the pressure to be normal is everywhere. But have you ever met a normal person? What do they look like? Where do they live? What do they eat for breakfast?And what the **** does normal mean anyway?This is the award-winning wobbly comedian Francesca Martinez’s funny, personal, and universal story of how she learned to stick two shaky fingers up to the crazy expectations of a world obsessed with being ‘normal’.Inside this book, you'll find stories of 50 extraordinary people such as:Evel Knievel, who jumped his motorcycle over 14 Greyhound…
busesThe Iceman, the most well-preserved human, found in the ice after 5,300 yearsSam Patch, who jumped Niagara Falls for $75Helen Thayer, who walked to the North Pole aloneRoy Sullivan, who was struck by lightning 7 timesThese intriguing facts and hundreds more await curious readers, amateur historians, and anyone who aspires to the altogether extraordinary!Burro Genius: A Memoir
By Victor Villasenor. 2004
Standing at the podium, Victor Villaseñor looked at the group of educators amassed before him, and his mind flooded with…
childhood memories of humiliation and abuse at the hands of his teachers. He became enraged. With a pounding heart, he began to speak of these incidents. When he was through, to his great disbelief he received a standing ovation. Many in the audience could not contain their own tears.So begins the passionate, touching memoir of Victor Villaseñor. Highly gifted and imaginative as a child, Villaseñor coped with an untreated learning disability (he was finally diagnosed, at the age of forty-four, with extreme dyslexia) and the frustration of growing up Latino in an English-only American school in the 1940s. Despite teachers who beat him because he could not speak English, Villaseñor clung to his dream of one day becoming a writer. He is now considered one of the premier writers of our time.To the Edges of the Earth: 1909, the Race for the Three Poles, and the Climax of the Age of Exploration
By Edward J. Larson. 2018
Winner of the National Outdoor Book Award From the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian, a "suspenseful" (WSJ) and "adrenaline-fueled" (Outside) entwined narrative of…
the most adventurous year of all time, when three expeditions simultaneously raced to the top, bottom, and heights of the world. As 1909 dawned, the greatest jewels of exploration—set at the world’s frozen extremes—lay unclaimed: the North and South Poles and the so-called “Third Pole,” the pole of altitude, located in unexplored heights of the Himalaya. Before the calendar turned, three expeditions had faced death, mutiny, and the harshest conditions on the planet to plant flags at the furthest edges of the Earth.In the course of one extraordinary year, Americans Robert Peary and Matthew Henson were hailed worldwide at the discovers of the North Pole; Britain’s Ernest Shackleton had set a new geographic “Furthest South” record, while his expedition mate, Australian Douglas Mawson, had reached the Magnetic South Pole; and at the roof of the world, Italy’s Duke of the Abruzzi had attained an altitude record that would stand for a generation, the result of the first major mountaineering expedition to the Himalaya's eastern Karakoram, where the daring aristocrat attempted K2 and established the standard route up the most notorious mountain on the planet. Based on extensive archival and on-the-ground research, Edward J. Larson weaves these narratives into one thrilling adventure story. Larson, author of the acclaimed polar history Empire of Ice, draws on his own voyages to the Himalaya, the arctic, and the ice sheets of the Antarctic, where he himself reached the South Pole and lived in Shackleton’s Cape Royds hut as a fellow in the National Science Foundations’ Antarctic Artists and Writers Program. These three legendary expeditions, overlapping in time, danger, and stakes, were glorified upon their return, their leaders celebrated as the preeminent heroes of their day. Stripping away the myth, Larson, a master historian, illuminates one of the great, overlooked tales of exploration, revealing the extraordinary human achievement at the heart of these journeys.Elena Vanishing: A Memoir
By Elena Dunkle, Dunkle. 2015
Seventeen-year-old Elena is vanishing. Every day means renewed determination, so every day means fewer calories. This is the story of…
a girl whose armor against anxiety becomes artillery against herself as she battles on both sides of a lose-lose war in a struggle with anorexia. Told entirely from Elena's perspective over a five-year period and cowritten with her mother, award-winning author Clare B. Dunkle, Elena's memoir is a fascinating and intimate look at a deadly disease, and a must read for anyone who knows someone suffering from an eating disorder.Sitting Pretty: The View from My Ordinary Resilient Disabled Body
By Rebekah Taussig. 2020
A memoir-in-essays from disability advocate and creator of the Instagram account @sitting_pretty Rebekah Taussig, processing a lifetime of memories to…
paint a beautiful, nuanced portrait of a body that looks and moves differently than most.Growing up as a paralyzed girl during the 90s and early 2000s, Rebekah Taussig only saw disability depicted as something monstrous (The Hunchback of Notre Dame), inspirational (Helen Keller), or angelic (Forrest Gump). None of this felt right; and as she got older, she longed for more stories that allowed disability to be complex and ordinary, uncomfortable and fine, painful and fulfilling.Writing about the rhythms and textures of what it means to live in a body that doesn’t fit, Rebekah reflects on everything from the complications of kindness and charity, living both independently and dependently, experiencing intimacy, and how the pervasiveness of ableism in our everyday media directly translates to everyday life. Disability affects all of us, directly or indirectly, at one point or another. By exploring this truth in poignant and lyrical essays, Taussig illustrates the need for more stories and more voices to understand the diversity of humanity. Sitting Pretty challenges us as a society to be patient and vigilant, practical and imaginative, kind and relentless, as we set to work to write an entirely different story.The Structured Literacy Planner: Designing Interventions for Common Reading Difficulties, Grades 1-9
By Louise Spear-Swerling. 2024
Structured Literacy (SL) approaches are increasingly recognized as the gold standard for teaching struggling readers. This highly practical book walks…
educators through designing SL interventions for students with common types of reading difficulties--word reading, comprehension, or a combination of both. Louise Spear-Swerling offers tools for assessing students' reading profiles and tailoring SL to their needs. In a convenient large-size format, the volume is packed with case studies, sample lesson plans addressing both early and advanced stages of reading, instructional activities, and application exercises for teachers. A chapter on English language structure presents essential foundations for implementing SL effectively. The companion website features a knowledge survey about language structure (with answer key), as well as downloadable copies of the book's 14 reproducible forms. See also Louise Spear-Swerling's edited volume, Structured Literacy Interventions: Teaching Students with Reading Difficulties, Grades K–6, which surveys SL interventions across all components of literacy.The Other Child: The Exceptional Siblings of Special Needs Children
By Linda Scotson. 2024
In The Other Child, Linda Scotson looks at the impact on a child at the arrival of a handicapped sibling.…
Lili, Linda Scotson&’s daughter, was only two when Doran was born, and she has been Doran&’s companion, motivator, carer—in fact, sister extraordinaire. In helping Doran, she has had to cope with other problems—with the loss of her father, ill health, and her own minor neurological difficulties. But she has done so with courage and determination. What do siblings lose, growing up with a brother or sister with brain injury—and what do they gain? How does the hostility and indifference of the outside world affect these children&’s lives? Becoming &“carers&” themselves, do they miss out on parental care from weary and overstretched parents? How do they reach an understanding, often when very young, of what their injured sibling can and cannot do? Shining through these stories is the love, the humor, and the constancy with which these children approach their very difficult family position—many of them, in adulthood, continuing to care for the handicapped companion of their childhood. By drawing attention to these children, Linda Scotson not only pays tribute to their qualities but also shows how unjust the system is towards those parents struggling to keep their brain-injured child within the family. She argues for a greater network of support systems for the healthy siblings and a greater understanding of the new home treatment programs for injured children—programs in which the whole family, as a team, can participate. This will be an invaluable book for parents of brain-injured children, and for all those professionally involved in the care of such families.In the tradition of Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, Robert Sapolsky, a foremost science writer and recipient of a MacArthur…
Genius Grant, tells the mesmerizing story of his twenty-one years in remote Kenya with a troop of savanna baboons."I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla,&” writes Robert Sapolsky in this witty and riveting chronicle of a scientist&’s coming-of-age in Africa. An exhilarating account of Sapolsky&’s twenty-one-year study of a troop of rambunctious baboons in Kenya, A Primate&’s Memoir interweaves serious scientific observations with wry commentary about the challenges and pleasures of living in the wilds of the Serengeti—for man and beast alike. Over two decades, Sapolsky survives culinary atrocities, gunpoint encounters, and a surreal kidnapping, while witnessing the encroachment of the tourist mentality on Africa. As he conducts unprecedented physiological research on wild primates, he becomes enamored of his subjects—unique and compelling characters in their own right—and he returns to them summer after summer, until tragedy finally prevents him. By turns hilarious and poignant, A Primate&’s Memoir is a magnum opus from one of our foremost science writers.South: The Endurance Expedition (Penguin Modern Classics)
By Ernest Shackleton. 2002
The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition was perhaps the most ambitious, elaborate and confident of all the British attempts to master the…
South Pole. Like the others it ended in disaster, with the Endeavour first trapped and then crushed to pieces in the ice and its crew trapped in the Antarctic, seemingly doomed to a slow and horrible death. In the face of extraordinary odds, Shackleton, the expedition's leader, decided on the only course that might just save them: a 700 nautical mile voyage in a small boat across the ferocious Southern Ocean in the forelorn hope of reaching the only human habitation within range: a small whaling station on the rugged, ice-sheeted island of South Georgia.South tells the story both of the whole astonishing expedition and of Shackleton's journey to rescue his men - one of the greatest feats of navigation ever recorded.The updated, straight-talking and accessible guide is ideal for teachers, teaching assistants, SENCOs, senior leadership and even home schooling parents…
who want to know more about supporting students with Learning Differences.Highlighting some of the more commonly encountered Specific Learning Differences (SpLD's), expert Diana Hudson concisely describes the signs of those that are most commonly encountered in the classroom. Covering: dyslexia, dyspraxia, dyscalculia, dysgraphia, autism spectrum condition, ADHD, OCD and featuring brand new chapters on Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA), Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) and tics and Tourette Syndrome, this book covers all the information you need, whilst reminding us that all neurodivergent children are individuals and have different qualities.Diana provides an overview of each identity and evaluates how you may need to adapt your levels of support in the classroom - as well as practical suggestions for modifying teaching materials and methods to make learning enjoyable, effective and accessible for all students. There are also dedicated chapters on helping students with SpLD's to improve their organisation and develop effective revision skills and exam techniques.Cases in Special Education Assessment
By Mary Weishaar, Victoria Scott. 2005
Cases in Special Education Assessment enhances any traditional asssessment text by bridging the gap between learning how to administer tests…
in an assessment course and understanding the practical aspects of administering assessments to a real child in a school. This casebook goes beyond providing the student with the technical “know-how” to administer and interpret a particular test by providing a much-neededcontext for the factors taken into considerations in the process of effective assessment.Sarah's Diary: An unflinchingly honest account of one family's struggle with depression
By Sarah Griffin. 2007
'I was fourteen when I found my Dad trying to commit suicide in the garage. Sounds shocking doesn't it? But…
that was part of me, part of living with my Dad'Sarah's Diary is the very personal diary of Sarah Griffin - an ordinary teenage girl learning to deal with the ups and downs of family life. On the outside hers was like any other family, but behind closed doors lay a sad and lonely secret. Sarah's Dad had depression -- a condition we've all heard of but seldom discuss. Beautifully written, brutally honest, Sarah's story is compelling reading.Sam and Chester: How a Mischievous Pig Transformed the Life of My Autistic Son
By Jo Bailey-Merritt. 2016
When Sam Bailey-Merritt was just two years old, almost overnight he lost the ability to communicate or function. His mother,…
Jo, was at a loss as to what to do as she saw her son grow increasingly isolated and begin to suffer from uncontrollable meltdowns. Eventually, Sam was diagnosed with autism.Sam's condition continued to worsen and, just when Jo had all but given up hope of being able to help him, the family went on a day trip to a nearby miniature pig farm. Sam immediately bonded with a tiny ginger piglet called Chester, who stood sad and alone, apart from the rest of the litter. The connection between the boy and the animal was immediate and their unusual friendship blossomed from the moment the family brought Chester home. The tiny pig refused to leave Sam's side - it was as if he knew that Sam needed a friend. And, for the first time in five years, Jo saw her son really laugh.While Sam's confidence grew, Chester grew in a different way: the micro pig that was supposed to become the size of a Cocker Spaniel in fact ballooned to three times that size - with hilarious consequences for the family! Chester has turned Sam's life around. He now has the ability to communicate his feelings, make friends and is caring and kind towards others.Sam and Chester is the heart-warming story of how a teacup-sized ginger pig helped to transform the life of a boy with autism. It is the emotional story of a mother's fight to win back her son.One of the greatest nineteenth-century scientist-explorers, Alexander von Humboldt traversed the tropical Spanish Americas between 1799 and 1804. By the…
time of his death in 1859, he had won international fame for his scientific discoveries, his observations of Native American peoples and his detailed descriptions of the flora and fauna of the 'new continent'. The first to draw and speculate on Aztec art, to observe reverse polarity in magnetism and to discover why America is called America, his writings profoundly influenced the course of Victorian culture, causing Darwin to reflect: 'He alone gives any notion of the feelings which are raised in the mind on first entering the Tropics'.Overcoming Dyslexia
By Dr Beve Hornsby. 1995
Dyslexia is a common diagnosable condition that is estimated to affect at least one child in ten. In its most…
usual form it is manifested as a difficulty in learning to read and write, but it is widely misunderstood and often mistaken for low intelligence or even laziness. Dr Beve Hornsby combines her experience as a psychologist, teacher and speech therapist in this informative and reassuring book for parents and teachers of children suffering from a disability no-one can see or understand, and offers advice on how to identify, tackle and eventually overcome dyslexia. Includes up-to-date information on Attention Deficit Disorder and the relevance of the latest Education Act.A New Voyage Round the World
By William Dampier. 2020
'A roaring tale ... remains as vivid and exciting today as it was on publication in 1697' GuardianThe pirate and…
adventurer William Dampier circumnavigated the globe three times, and took notes wherever he went. This is his frank, vivid account of his buccaneering sea voyages around the world, from the Caribbean to the Pacific and East Indies. Filled with accounts of raids, escapes, wrecks and storms, it also contains precise observations of people, places, animals and food (including the first English accounts of guacamole, mango chutney and chopsticks). A bestseller on publication, this unique record of the colonial age influenced Robinson Crusoe, Gulliver's Travels and consequently the whole of English literature.Edited with an Introduction by Nicholas ThomasMiracle
By Amanda Leask. 2016
As seen on ITV's Britain's Got Talent, where they captured the hearts of the nation, this is Amanda and Miracle's…
incredible story of survival, love and hopeSnatched from the streets of Thailand, loaded onto a truck with hundreds of other stolen dogs and destined for the restaurants of Hanoi, Miracle the dog shouldn’t be alive today. But an incredible rescue led to a fateful meeting with Amanda Leask, a dog lover from Scotland. Devastated by Miracle’s plight and the hopelessness of his situation, she knew she had to do everything in her power to save him. But Amanda could never have imagined that in doing so she was really saving herself… Amanda’s six year-old son Kyle, who was born with cerebral palsy and autism, built a deep and lasting connection with Miracle and their special bond has transformed not only Kyle’s life but that of the entire family. Heartbreaking, inspirational and ultimately life-affirming, this incredible tale is proof that miracles really can happen…