Boy In A China Shop

'During downtime on the pottery throwdown Keith made my hair curl with some of his tales - he's a great raconteur and recounts his story in this book as he does in real life - with joy, charm & mischief.' - Sara Cox 'Fans of Throw Down will enjoy this warm autobiography.' - Daily Mail 'An engaging read by an endearing, unassuming man who has always stayed true to his passions.' - Daily Mirror Ballet dancer. Front man in an almost famous band. Judge on The Great Pottery Throwdown. How did all that happen? By accident mostly. But I always say we make our own luck. What if an art teacher hadn't given me a lump of clay? What if the band had been really successful? What if I hadn't taken a photograph of a bowl to the buyer at Heals in London? What if she'd hated it? Or hadn't seen it... What if I hadn't agreed to dress up as Adele to make a crazy YouTube video? Every chapter of my book is based around an object (usually a pot) that's been significant in my life. It's just a trigger to let me go off in a lot of different directions and tell a few stories. A lot of stories. Dyslexia. The art teacher who changed my life. My Mother. My Father. A life-changing job interview with a man who lay under his car throughout. That video. Sifting through half-forgotten memories, trying to pick out the golden nuggets from the stuff that is definitely dross has been a curious, and at times hilarious, sometimes sad, but definitely enlightening process. So here it is - my pottery life with some very loud music and some pretty good dancing. And a lot of throwing, fettling and firing. Oh ...and a good dose of anxiety.

After Bill the bull accidentally destroys much of the contents of a china shop, three old ladies help him acquire the teacup he had hoped to buy.

“What a knockout. An incredibly rich and new voice or American literature… China Boy grabs the reader’s heart and won’t let go… A wonder of a story.”—Amy Tan, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Joy Luck Club Kai Ting is the only American-born son of a Shanghai family that fled China during Mao’s revolution. Growing up in a San Francisco multicultural, low-income neighborhood, Kai is caught between two worlds—embracing neither the Chinese nor the American way to life. After his mother’s death, Kai is suddenly plunged into American culture by his stepmother, who tries to erase every vestige of China from the household. Warm, funny and deeply moving, China Boy is an account of how a brave friend on the street and a former pro boxing coach equip Kai to navigate through broken family relationships and the perils of growing up in America to find the triumph and richness of developing a new and complex American identity.

The Boy Behind the China Cabinet: a Memoir about Addiction, Hollywood, Mother Teresa and Me is the eclectic story of one man's coming to terms with himself. It is tragic, and at times hysterically funny, as the memoir recounts growing up in the Bronx in a large Catholic Italian family and living through his oldest brother's drug addiction. It is a story of self-discovery, as he leaves home to pursue an acting career in Hollywood. It is also a story of faith as he meets Mother Teresa, leaves Hollywood, and pursues the life of a missionary in one of the strictest orders of the Catholic Church. Filled with engaging stories about the Hollywood elite, Mother Teresa, struggles in the convent, and persevering in the face of adversity, this story shows how touching and sometimes shattering the journey to find yourself can be.

The amazing, dramatic, and painful autobiographical story of Ange Zhang as he came of age during the Cultural Revolution in China. When Mao’s Cultural Revolution took hold in China in June 1966, Ange Zhang was thirteen years old. His father was a famous writer. Shortly after the revolution began, many of Ange’s classmates joined the Red Guard, Mao’s youth movement, and they drove their teachers out of the classrooms. But in the weeks that followed, Ange discovered that his father’s fame as a writer now meant that he was a target of the new regime. When his father was arrested, he began to question everything that was happening in his country. Finally, Ange was forced to join many other young urban Chinese students in the countryside for re-education where he found the emotional space to develop his own artistic talent and to find that he, like his father, was an artist — except that Ange’s talent lay in painting and drawing. This dramatic, painful autobiographical story is complemented by photographs, many drawn from Ange’s personal collection, as well as a non-fiction section that explains the historical period and is also illustrated with archival images. Key Text Features author’s note glossary Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.6.7 Integrate information presented in different media or formats (e.g., visually, quantitatively) as well as in words to develop a coherent understanding of a topic or issue.

A sensitively written, real-life story about a boy called LITTLE LEAP FORWARD, growing up in the hutongs of Beijing in the 1960s, at the time of the Cultural Revolution. Little Leap Foeward offers children an intimate and immediate account of a child s experiences as Mao Tse Tung s Great Leap Forward policy tightens its grips on China. A chapter book AGES 9-12 Colour illustrations

"Knox works to keep his family together as they move from Hong Kong back to northern California during the initial outbreak of the coronavirus."--

Filled with Jeffrey Archer’s trademark twists and turns, Hidden in Plain Sight is the gripping next instalment in the life of William Warwick. Newly promoted, Detective Sergeant William Warwick has been reassigned to the drugs squad. His first case: to investigate a notorious south London drug lord known as the Viper. But as William and his team close the net around a criminal network unlike any they have ever encountered, he is also faced with an old enemy, Miles Faulkner. It will take all of William’s cunning to devise a means to bring both men to justice, a trap neither will expect, one that is hidden in plain sight . . . Hidden in Plain Sight follows on from Nothing Ventured and continues with Turn a Blind Eye, but can be read as a standalone story.