Believe Like A Child

Alessa is just seven years old when her uncle rapes her for the first time. As the years pass, his sexual appetite becomes more voracious and his perversion more twisted, until the abuse has become almost a daily ritual, with the unspoken involvement of the girl's mother. At the age of sixteen, after the death of her only friend, Alessa finds herself at the mercy of her real-life monster, with no relief in sight. She flees her home to escape this hell, only to find herself descending into a more dangerous one. Alone and helpless in the streets of North Philadelphia, she encounters more human predators who want to take over her life and devour her. About to hit rock bottom, Alessa manages to break away from her new tormentors and finds refuge in a shelter for homeless and abused women. Wherever she goes, however, trouble keeps seeking her out, until she meets three people who change the course of her life forever. Though Alessa's bittersweet journey is perpetually fraught with challenges, she does, nevertheless, manage to find fleeting moments of joy along the way. But as she begins to settle down, a ghost from the past comes to haunt her again, threatening to destroy the very foundation of her small world and plunging her back into an abyss of despair, until she makes her final bid for escape.

Home isn't safe for young Alessa because her uncle lives there...unfortunately neither are the streets.The beginning of this story is based on Paige Dearth's life. The remainder of this book is fiction.Alessa's uncle is a child predator, and she's one of his victims.At sixteen, after the death of her only friend, Alessa finds herself isolated at home with her uncle. Unable to live there, she runs away.Alone on the streets of North Philadelphia, she encounters more people who hurt her. About to hit rock bottom, Alessa breaks free from her new tormentors and finds refuge in a shelter for homeless and abused women.Wherever she goes, however, trouble keeps seeking her out, until she meets three people who change the course of her life. Though Alessa's bittersweet journey is fraught with challenges, she does, nevertheless, find fleeting moments of joy. Then, as she settles down, a ghost from the past comes to haunt her, threatening to destroy the very foundation of her small world and plunging her back into an abyss of despair, until she makes her final bid for escape.

In the 1980s in California, New Jersey, and New York, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Ohio, and elsewhere, daycare workers were arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of committing horrible sexual crimes against the children they cared for. These crimes, prosecutors said, had gone undetected for years, and their brutality and sadism defied all imagining. What's more, the abusers had photographed and videotaped their victims, distributing the images through a sophisticated international network of child pornographers. More often than not, violent satanic cult worship had also played a central role, with children made to watch forced abortions in cemeteries and then eat hacked-off bits of the little corpses. In just over a decade, thousands of people in every part of the country were investigated as child sex abusers, and some one-hundred and fifty of them were sent to prison. But, none of it happened. It was an epic decade-long outbreak of collective hysteria – on a par with the Salem witch trials or the red scares of the 1950s. Using extensive archival research conducted in Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and elsewhere, and drawing on dozens of interviews conducted with the hysteria's major figures, Richard Beck shows how a group of legislators, doctors, lawyers, and parents, all working with the best of intentions, set the stage for a judicial disaster. A number of opportunistic journalists helped to carry the story from state to state, and the silence of their colleagues, who should have known better, allowed it to keep spreading long after it became clear that the story was simply unsupported by evidence. Beck reveals how a small group of skeptics finally began working to slow the runaway train in the last half of the decade, and he explores the fates of those accused and convicted of these unbelievable crimes, the casualties of a culture war. It is this culture war that is the books pervasive subtext – the conditions that made possible the demented frenzy of accusations were very specific, and at the root of them were competing visions of society and the things that threatened it most.

A new and expanded version of Seamless Faith, now with more than a dozen new spiritual practices and additional resources for parents, kids, grandparents, and communities that care about families! Add family faith moments to your daily routine with little or no prep, and share meaningful spiritual experiences with your children! Traci Smith, a pastor and mother of three, offers ways to discover and develop new spiritual practices as a family, whether you're a new seeker or a lifelong follower. Faithful Families is brimming with easy, do-it-yourself ideas for transforming your family's everyday moments into sacred moments! Faithful Families helps you: connect faith to your family's everyday life; add family faith moments into your daily routine; learn new spiritual practices alongside your children; teach your children to appreciate religious diversity with time-tested non-Christian and Christian spiritual practices; respond to life's everyday challenges and opportunities with meaningful practices Faithful Families is the perfect gift for Parents, Grandparents, Aunts and Uncles; Baptisms; Baby Showers; New Families; Christian educators and those they serve; Preschool Classes; and Godparents Faithful Families is part of The Young Clergy Women Project

From the #1 New York Times bestselling creators of I Am Enough comes an empowering follow-up that celebrates every child’s limitless potential. I Believe I Can is an affirmation for boys and girls of every background to love and believe in themselves. Actress and activist Grace Byers and artist Keturah A. Bobo return with another gorgeously illustrated new classic that’s the perfect gift for baby showers, birthdays, or just for reading at home again and again. My presence matters in this world. I know I can do anything, if only I believe I can.

Faced with the difficulties of growing up and choosing a religion, a twelve-year-old girl talks over her problems with her own private God.

An international bestseller and one of The Times’ “Top 50 Novels Published in the 21st Century,” Claire Keegan’s piercing contemporary classic Foster is a heartbreaking story of childhood, loss, and love; now released as a standalone book for the first time ever in the US It is a hot summer in rural Ireland. A child is taken by her father to live with relatives on a farm, not knowing when or if she will be brought home again. In the Kinsellas’ house, she finds an affection and warmth she has not known and slowly, in their care, begins to blossom. But there is something unspoken in this new household—where everything is so well tended to—and this summer must soon come to an end. Winner of the prestigious Davy Byrnes Award and published in an abridged version in the New Yorker, this internationally bestselling contemporary classic is now available for the first time in the US in a full, standalone edition. A story of astonishing emotional depth, Foster showcases Claire Keegan’s great talent and secures her reputation as one of our most important storytellers.

First-hand, human stories of hope, resilience, determination, and family: a call to see the world's children as our own, by the President and CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF In I Believe in ZERO, President and CEO of the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, an organization known for its decades of charity work and philanthropy with the United Nations, Caryl M. Stern draws on her travels around the world, offering memorable stories that present powerful and sometimes counter-intuitive lessons about life. I Believe in ZERO reflects her-and UNICEF's-mission to reduce the number of preventable deaths of children under the age of five from 19,000 each day to zero. Each of the stories in I Believe in ZERO focuses on a particular locale-Bangladesh, Mozambique, earthquake-ravaged Haiti, the Brazilian Amazon-and weaves together fascinating material on the country and its history, an account of the humanitarian crises at issue, and depictions of the people she meets on the ground. Stern tells of mothers coming together to affect change, of local communities with valuable perspectives of their own, and of children who continue to sustain their dreams and hopes even in the most dire of situations. Throughout, Stern traces her emerging global consciousness-and describes how these stories can positively impact our own children. In this incredibly moving book, Stern hopes to open hearts and minds and leave readers with the belief that no child anywhere should lack basic human support-and that every child and mother can be an inspiration.