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Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus: Volume 1
"Aven is a perky, hilarious, and inspiring protagonist whose attitude and humor will linger even after the last page has turned." --School Library Journal (Starred review) The paperback edition of the bestselling middle grade novel about a spunky girl born without arms and a boy with Tourette syndrome navigating the challenges of middle school, disability, and friendship--all while solving a mystery in a western theme park. Aven Green loves to tell people that she lost her arms in an alligator wrestling match, or a wildfire in Tanzania, but the truth is she was born without them. And when her parents take a job running Stagecoach Pass, a rundown western theme park in Arizona, Aven moves with them across the country knowing that she'll have to answer the question over and over again. Her new life takes an unexpected turn when she bonds with Connor, a classmate who also feels isolated because of his own disability, and they discover a room at Stagecoach Pass that holds bigger secrets than Aven ever could have imagined. It's hard to solve a mystery, help a friend, and face your worst fears. But Aven's about to discover she can do it all . . . even without arms. Autumn 2017 Kids' Indie Next Pick
Junior Library Guild Selection
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Momentous Events in the Life of a Cactus
"High School. Two words that struck fear into the heart of every armless middle schooler I knew. Which was me. And like two people online." This sequel to the critically acclaimed Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus, now in paperback, follows Aven Green as she confronts yet another challenge: high school. "Those preparing to 'slay the sucktastic beast known as high school' will particularly appreciate this spirited read." --Kirkus (Starred review) Just as Aven starts to feel comfortable in Stagecoach Pass, with her friends and schoolmates accustomed to her lack of "armage," everything changes once again. She's about to begin high school . . . with 3,000 new kids to stare at her. And no matter how much Aven tries to play it cool, nothing prepares her for the reality. In a year filled with confusion, humiliation, and just maybe love, can Aven manage to stay true to herself? -
Disability Visibility: First-Person Stories from the Twenty-First Century
"Disability rights activist Alice Wong brings tough conversations to the forefront of society with this anthology. It sheds light on the experience of life as an individual with disabilities, as told by none other than authors with these life experiences. It's an eye-opening collection that readers will revisit time and time again." --Chicago Tribune One in five people in the United States lives with a disability. Some disabilities are visible, others less apparent--but all are underrepresented in media and popular culture. Activist Alice Wong brings together this urgent, galvanizing collection of contemporary essays by disabled people, just in time for the thirtieth anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, From Harriet McBryde Johnson's account of her debate with Peter Singer over her own personhood to original pieces by authors like Keah Brown and Haben Girma; from blog posts, manifestos, and eulogies to Congressional testimonies, and beyond: this anthology gives a glimpse into the rich complexity of the disabled experience, highlighting the passions, talents, and everyday lives of this community. It invites readers to question their own understandings. It celebrates and documents disability culture in the now. It looks to the future and the past with hope and love. -
Sold outWhy I Burned My Book
This wide-ranging book shows why Paul Longmore is one of the most respected figures in disability studies today. Understanding disability as a major variety of human experience, he urges us to establish it as a category of social, political, and historical analysis in much the same way that race, gender, and class already have been. The essays here search for the often hidden pattern of systemic prejudice and probe into the institutionalized discrimination that affects the one in five Americans with disabilities. Whether writing about the social critic Randolph Bourne, contemporary political activists, or media representations of people with disabilities, Longmore demonstrates that the search for heroes is a key part of the continuing struggle of disabled people to gain a voice and to shape their destinies. His essays on bioethics and public policy examine the conflict of agendas between disability rights activists and non-disabled policy makers, healthcare professionals, euthanasia advocates, and corporate medical bureaucracies. The title essay, which concludes the book, demonstrates the necessity of activism for any disabled person who wants access to the American dream.Sold out -
You Can Make a Difference!: A Creative Workbook and Journal for Young Activists
Packed with fun activities for self-reflection and development, this creative workbook is the ultimate toolkit for all young activists looking to make a difference and create change. Each chapter includes voices from inspiring young game changers to encourage readers to channel their passion for social justice into positive action.
Focusing on identity, discrimination and oppression, it offers the space to explore new ideas, self-reflect and expand awareness of the systems underpinning injustice. Chapters engage with a range of social justice and identity issues, including race, gender, sexual orientation and disability, providing the tools needed to facilitate and encourage personal growth. Through creative art activities, journal prompts, interviews and more, this workbook will inspire, engage and empower you to realize your own social justice project and put it into action.Sold out -
Gay a Day
From pirates, politicians, and pornographers to starlets, serial killers, and saints, Gay a Day showcases a multicultural mosaic of real-life stories. Each day features the biography of a gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, or intersex person of note: their accomplishments, their loves, their tragedies, and their times. With every page you turn, you'll find beautiful heroics, chilling horrors, and secret histories that will scandalize you, and by the end of the year you'll be prouder than ever. A great read for people interested in the rich yet often hidden past of queer folk.
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Sold outRad Families: A Celebration
Rad Families: A Celebration honors the messy, the painful, the playful, the beautiful, the myriad ways we create families. This is not an anthology of experts, or how-to articles on perfect parenting; it often doesn't even try to provide answers. Instead, the writers strive to be honest and vulnerable in sharing their stories and experiences, their failures and their regrets.
Gathering parents and writers from diverse communities, it explores the process of getting pregnant from trans birth to adoption, grapples with issues of racism and police brutality, probes raising feminists and feminist parenting. It plumbs the depths of empty nesting and letting go.
Some contributors are recognizable authors and activists but most are everyday parents working and loving and trying to build a better world one diaper change at a time. It's a book that reminds us all that we are not alone, that community can help us get through the difficulties, can, in fact, make us better people. It's a celebration, join us!
Contributors include Jonas Cannon, Ian MacKaye, Burke Stansbury, Danny Goot, Simon Knaphus, Artnoose, Welch Canavan, Daniel Muro LaMere, Jennifer Lewis, Zach Ellis, Alicia Dornadic, Jesse Palmer, Mindi J., Carla Bergman, Tasnim Nathoo, Rachel Galindo, Robert Liu-Trujillo, Dawn Caprice, Shawn Taylor, D.A. Begay, Philana Dollin, Airial Clark, Allison Wolfe, Roger Porter, cubbie rowland-storm, Annakai & Rob Geshlider, Jeremy Adam Smith, Frances Hardinge, Jonathan Shipley, Bronwyn Davies Glover, Amy Abugo Ongiri, Mike Araujo, Craig Elliott, Eleanor Wohlfeiler, Scott Hoshida, Plinio Hernandez, Madison Young, Nathan Torp, Sasha Vodnik, Jessie Susannah, Krista Lee Hanson, Carvell Wallace, Dani Burlison, Brian Whitman, scott winn, Kermit Playfoot, Chris Crass, and Zora Moniz.
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Romance in Marseille
The pioneering novel of physical disability, transatlantic travel, and black international politics. A vital document of black modernism and one of the earliest overtly queer fictions in the African American tradition. Published for the first time. A Penguin Classic A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice/Staff Pick
Vulture's Ten Best Books of 2020 pick Buried in the archive for almost ninety years, Claude McKay's Romance in Marseille traces the adventures of a rowdy troupe of dockworkers, prostitutes, and political organizers--collectively straight and queer, disabled and able-bodied, African, European, Caribbean, and American. Set largely in the culture-blending Vieux Port of Marseille at the height of the Jazz Age, the novel takes flight along with Lafala, an acutely disabled but abruptly wealthy West African sailor. While stowing away on a transatlantic freighter, Lafala is discovered and locked in a frigid closet. Badly frostbitten by the time the boat docks, the once-nimble dancer loses both of his lower legs, emerging from life-saving surgery as what he terms "an amputated man." Thanks to an improbably successful lawsuit against the shipping line, however, Lafala scores big in the litigious United States. Feeling flush after his legal payout, Lafala doubles back to Marseille and resumes his trans-African affair with Aslima, a Moroccan courtesan. With its scenes of black bodies fighting for pleasure and liberty even when stolen, shipped, and sold for parts, McKay's novel explores the heritage of slavery amid an unforgiving modern economy. This first-ever edition of Romance in Marseille includes an introduction by McKay scholars Gary Edward Holcomb and William J. Maxwell that places the novel within both the "stowaway era" of black cultural politics and McKay's challenging career as a star and skeptic of the Harlem Renaissance. -
Sold outVenom & Vow
Two enemy kingdoms are forced to work together to break a curse in this lush YA fantasy, featuring a transgender prince and a bigender dama/assassin in the lead roles.
Keep your enemy closer. Cade McKenna is a transgender prince who's doubling for his brother.
Valencia Palafox is a young dama attending the future queen of Eliana.
Gael Palma is the infamous boy assassin Cade has vowed to protect.
Patrick McKenna is the reluctant heir to a kingdom, and the prince Gael has vowed to destroy. Cade doesn't know that Gael and Valencia are the same person.
Valencia doesn't know that every time she thinks she's fighting Patrick, she's fighting Cade.
And when Cade and Valencia blame each other for a devastating enchantment that takes both their families, neither of them realizes that they have far more dangerous enemies. Cowritten by married writing team Anna-Marie and Elliott McLemore, Venom & Vow is a lush and powerful YA novel about owning your power and becoming who you really are - no matter the cost.Sold out -
Will on the Inside
"An honest, sophisticated look at the myriad emotions surrounding chronic illness and growing up 'not straight' in a religious Georgia town." --Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Relatable, real, and utterly engrossing." --School Library Journal (starred review)
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After dedicated soccer player Will is sidelined from the season--and his friend group--due to complications from his newly diagnosed Crohn's disease, he finds himself figuring out who he really is on the inside in this heartfelt and thoughtful middle grade novel that's perfect for readers who love books by Maulik Pancholy and Christine Day.
Will loves playing center midfield on his middle school soccer team. This year, though, Will hasn't felt like himself; his stomach has been bothering him, and he has no energy at all. When his new doctor diagnoses him with Crohn's disease, Will hopes that means he'll start feeling better soon and he can get back to playing with his team before the season ends.
But Will's new medicines come with all kinds of side effects, Forced to sit out afternoon practice, Will finds himself hanging out with a kid at school, Griffin. This could be a real problem, seeing as Griffin just asked Will's best friend to the spring dance. As in, guy friend. What would Will's teammates say if they knew the whole story? Not to mention Will's friends at church.
With all these changes happening faster than he can process them, Will knows that he has a lot to figure out about who he really is on the inside.
Andrew Eliopulos's novel is a memorable, affecting story that will have wide appeal. It was selected as a Junior Library Guild title and named one of "6 LGBTQ+ Kids' Books We Need More Than Ever" by Kirkus Reviews.
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The Year My Life Went Down the Toilet
A hilariously honest book about surviving middle school while navigating a chronic illness from the Stonewall Honor-winning author of Almost Flying. Twelve-year-old Al Schneider is too scared to talk about the two biggest things in her life: 1. Her stomach hurts all the time and she has no idea why.
2. She's almost definitely 100% sure she likes girls. So she holds it in...until she can't. After nearly having an accident of the lavatorial variety in gym class, Al finds herself getting a colonoscopy and an answer--she has Crohn's disease. But rather than solving all her problems, Al's diagnosis just makes everything worse. It's scary and embarrassing. And worst of all, everyone wants her to talk about it--her overprotective mom, her best friend, and most annoyingly her gastroenterologist, who keeps trying to get her to go to a support group for kids with similar chronic illnesses. But, who wants to talk about what you do in the bathroom? The Year My Life Went Down the Toilet is a wildly funny and honest story about finding community, telling the truth even when it's hard, and the many indignities of middle school life. -
An ABC of Equality
A is for Ability, B is for Belief, C is for Class. The best-selling book An ABC of Equality introduces complicated concepts surrounding social justice to the youngest of children. All people have the right to be treated fairly, no matter who they are, what they look like, or where they come from. From A to Z, simple explanations accompanied by engaging artwork teach children about the world we live in and how to navigate our way through it. Each right-hand page includes a brightly decorated letter with the word it stands for and an encouraging slogan. On the left, a colorful illustration and bite-size text sum up the concept. Cheerful people from a range of backgrounds, ethnicities, and abilities lead the way through the alphabet.- L is for LGBTQIA. Find the words that make you, you.
- N is for No. No means no.
- P is for Privilege. Be aware of your advantages.
- X is for Xenophobia. Ask questions and you'll see there's nothing to be afraid of.
Celebrate your Differences, ask more Questions, share your Kindness, and learn to Understand the world.
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Harley Quinn: The Animated Series Volume 1: The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour
Hey, do you wanna see Harley and Ivy go on a road trip and make out Picking up directly from the cliffhanger ending of Harley Quinn: The Animated Series, Harley and Ivy are on the run in a Thelma-and-Louise journey, it's all here! Harley and Ivy on the road trip of the century! Following the wedding disaster of the decade, Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy end up on the run from Commissioner Gordon and the GCPD! But as fun as all that sounds, Ivy still worries over leaving Kite Man at the altar... Luckily, Harley's got the perfect scheme to shake her out of her wedding-day blues! This incredible volume is packed to the brim containing Harley Quinn: The Animated Series: The Eat. Bang! Kill. Tour #1-6! -
Sold outQueer Formalism: The Return
Featuring cultural figures like Lana del Rey, Sally Mann, David Lynch, Lorna Simpson, and Kirsten Dunst, Queer Formalism: The Return is a new kind of queer art writing that considers love and regret in their many forms.Sold out -
Echoes of Jerry
Growing up in suburban Cleveland, Judah Leblang felt a deep connection with his Uncle Jerry, an orally-educated deaf man who lived an isolated life between the deaf and hearing worlds. Like Jerry, Leblang felt different too, struggling with his sexuality and trying to find his place in society, finally coming out in the mid-1980s. Many years later, after working in the Deaf Community and later, losing much of his own hearing, the author goes on a quest to understand his late uncle and to give him a voice--this man who died of a heart attack at 44, and who remained a mystery to those around him, encased in his silent world.