Middle Childhood

Paddington Bear had traveled all the way from Darkest Peru when the Brown family first met him on Paddington Station. Since then their lives have never been quite the same... for ordinary things become quite extraordinary when a bear called Paddington is involved.

It happens to every parent. One day, you have a sweet son or daughter who loves to snuggle on the couch and who puts a smile on your face just by walking into the room. The next day, it's as if someone left the door open and let in an alien with a smart mouth and an attitude that, frankly, you could do without. Entering middle school is like stepping onto a different planet - for parent and child alike. It's a planet where peer pressure, social media, and hormones can wreak havoc in your child's life.

Middle school is its own important, distinct territory, and yet it's either written off as an uncomfortable rite of passage or lumped in with other developmental phases. Based on her many years working in schools, professional counselor Phyllis Fagell sees these years instead as a critical stage that parents can't afford to ignore (and though "middle school" includes different grades in various regions, Fagell maintains that the ages make more of a difference than the setting).

Parents who are deeply invested in their children's education can be hard on themselves and their kids. When exhausted parents are living the day-to-day grind, it can seem impossible to muster enough energy to make learning fun or interesting. Author Julie Bogart distills decades of experience - homeschooling her five now grown children, developing curricula, and training homeschooling families around the world - to teach parents how to make education an exciting, even enchanting, experience for their kids, whether they're in elementary or high school.

Middle school can be one of the toughest times in a kid’s life—for them and for their parents and educators. It’s filled with transitions, upheaval, and brand-new experiences that can be overwhelming and intimidating. But licensed clinical professional counselor Phyllis Fagell has put together a practical, evidence-based, and compassionate guide for parents and educators to help their tweens through most challenging situations. Middle School Superpowers teaches middle schoolers how to activate the 12 superpowers they need to discover their strengths and navigate decisions and disappointment.

Best-selling author and renowned religious scholar Karen Armstrong presents a concise and articulate history of Islam, the world's fastest-growing faith. Beginning with the Prophet Muhammad's flight from Medina and concluding with an examination of modern Islamic practices and concerns, Armstrong delivers an unbiased overview. She contends that no religion is more feared and misunderstood by the Western world as Islam, and firmly challenges the notion that these two civilizations are on a collision course.

The Herdmans plus Halloween have always spelled disaster. Every year, these six kids, the worst in the history of Woodrow Wilson School and possibly even the world, wreak havoc on the whole town. They steal candy, spray-paint kids, and take anything that's not nailed down. Now the mayor has had it. He's decided to cancel Halloween. The Herdmans manage to turn the worst Halloween ever into the best Halloween ever in this uproarious sequel to The Best Christmas Pageant Ever.

There is a pivotal sea change happening in children’s development. The age of puberty has been trending earlier for decades, and now starts as young as 8 years old in girls and 9 in boys. Bullying doesn’t just happen on the playground, but over text and DM. Depression and anxiety are drastically on the rise. Couple earlier puberty with ill-equipped, developing brains and the onslaught of new media and stressors that never existed when we were kids, and it’s clear that parents need a new guide to raise this new generation.

Ellen Tebbits is convinced she'll die of embarrassment if any of the girls at school discover her secret. But then she meets Austine Allen, a new girl in class who's hiding the very same secret. Instantly, the two become best friends. They do everything together, from clapping erasers to riding horses. Ellen quickly learns that embarrassing secrets and pesky troublemakers like Otis Spofford aren't so bad when you have someone special to stick up for you.

Greg had started looking around the cafeteria, and everywhere he looked, he saw quarters. He saw kids trading quarters for ice-cream sandwiches and cupcakes and cookies at the dessert table. There were quarters all over the place, buckets of them. At that moment, Greg’s view of school changed completely and forever. School had suddenly become the most interesting place on the planet. Because young Greg Kenton had decided that school would be an excellent place to make his fortune.

Her name is Omakayas, or Little Frog, because her first step was a hop, and she lives on an island in Lake Superior. It is 1850 and the lives of the Ojibwe have returned to a familiar rhythm: they build their birchbark houses in the summer, go to the ricing camps in the fall to harvest and feast, and move to their cozy cedar log cabins near the town of LaPointe before the first snows.

As one of the most profound and insightful scholars of the Middle East, Fouad Ajami’s sensibility was powerfully shaped by his childhood and youth in Lebanon in the ’50s and ’60s. The time was a transitional one - not only for the Middle East but for America and the world. Lebanon in this era was just coming into its own as a cosmopolitan destination of the international jet set as well as earnest American educators seeking to modernize Arab society.

Are you struggling to be an effective teacher? Do your kids walk all over you, turning your classroom into a chaotic whirlwind of chatter? The truth is, the majority of new educators have faced similar challenges with classroom disruption and low student motivation. You'd like to be friendly with your class, but you can't let the kids walk all over you. There must be some way to harmonize such tensions, some way to lead your class with the conviction of a general but the gentleness of a scholar. This audiobook will teach you how to be an effective teacher.

Born to a violently dysfunctional home in working-class Denmark, Lisbeth Zornig Andersen and her three older brothers were bounced between foster care and state-run institutions, then back again to their chemically dependent mother and sadistic stepfather. For Lisbeth, it was a childhood without perimeters. It was blighted by poverty, sexual abuse, neglect, betrayal, and further victimization by the broken Danish social services system that forced Lisbeth to live where and how it saw fit.

This book is a compilation of teaching techniques that have worked for the author over the years. It can help new middle school teachers find techniques and ideas, or it can help veteran middle school teachers adopt, modify, or reflect on their current practices. The book covers a wide range of topics, from how to start the semester and class management techniques to delivery of instruction and how to prepare for parent conferences.

Thousands of knights and foot soldiers are mustering in Venice for the launch of the fourth Crusade. Among them is young Arthur de Caldicot, soon to dubbed a knight. He is thrilled to be part of this huge gathering; but all too soon the crusade falls into disarray.

Azar Nafisi, author of the beloved international best seller Reading Lolita in Tehran, now gives us a stunning personal story of growing up in Iran, memories of her life lived in thrall to a powerful and complex mother, against the background of a country's political revolution.

It's not easy being the middle child, especially when your dad is a Navy chief. Meet Piper Reed, a spunky nine-year-old who has moved more times than she can count on one hand. From Texas to Guam, wherever Piper goes, adventure follows, inspired by her active imagination, free-wheeling spirit, and a bit of sister magic.

Griffith, Graham, and Ruby's father passed away in the war. And now they must join their mother and their father's wartime traveling baseball team, The Travelin' Nine, on a a tour of America to raise money. No one will tell the kids why the team needs money so badly. Their only clue is a baseball with a hole the size of an acorn in it that their Uncle Owen gave to them the night of their father's funeral. When all three kids hold the ball, strange things begin to happen.

Leah Broad's magnificent group biography resurrects these four forgotten voices, recounting lives of rebellion, heartbreak and ambition, and celebrating their musical masterpieces. Lighting up a panoramic sweep of British history over two World Wars, Quartet revolutionises the canon forever.