City Of Speed

In a modern mega-city built around dragons, one boy gets caught up in the world of underground dragon battles and a high-stakes gang war that could tear his family apart. In the city of Drakopolis, dragons and humans have co-existed for centuries. Dragons burn the city's garbage, taxi its busy citizens from place to place, and even compete in vicious underground battles for ganglike kins. But the dragons also compete in legal sports, like the spectacular aerial races that draw in cheering crowds by the tens of thousands. Abel is at just such a race when he witnesses the unthinkable. A long-shot competitor pulls off an impossible win -- then flies into a destructive rage! Someone in the city is experimenting on dragons: hacking their DNA, rebuilding their bodies, and breaking their minds. Who could be driving the dragons berserk? Abel must find out who's behind the experiments and put a stop to them, and to do so he’ll infiltrate the kins’ underground street races on a long-shot dragon of his own. But with his sister working for a kin, his brother serving the city's secret police, and a bully at school racing for Abel's worst enemies, will Abel find any safety past the finish line?

In a modern mega-city built around dragons, one boy gets caught up in the world of underground dragon battles and a high-stakes gang war that could tear his family apart. Once, dragons nearly drove themselves to extinction. But in the city of Drakopolis, humans domesticated them centuries ago. Now dragons haul the city’s cargo, taxi its bustling people between skyscrapers, and advertise its wares in bright, neon displays. Most famously of all, the dragons battle. Different breeds take to the skies in nighttime bouts between the infamous kins—criminal gangs who rule through violence and intimidation. Abel has always loved dragons, but after a disastrous showing in his dragon rider’s exam, he's destined never to fly one himself. All that changes the night his sister appears at his window, entrusting him with a secret...and a stolen dragon. Turns out, his big sister is a dragon thief! Too bad his older brother is a rising star in Drakopolis law enforcement... To protect his friends and his family, Abel must partner with the stolen beast, riding in kin battles and keeping more secrets than a dragon has scales. When everyone wants him fighting on their side, can Abel figure out what’s worth fighting for?

Slow Cities: Conquering Our Speed Addiction for Health and Sustainability demonstrates, counterintuitively, that reducing the speed of travel within cities saves time for residents and creates more sustainable, liveable, prosperous and healthy environments. This book examines the ways individuals and societies became dependent on transport modes that required investment in speed. Using research from multiple disciplinary perspectives, the book demonstrates ways in which human, economic and environmental health are improved with a slowing of city transport. It identifies effective methods, strategies and policies for decreasing the speed of motorised traffic and encouraging a modal shift to walking, cycling and public transport. This book also offers a holistic assessment of the impact of speed on daily behaviours and life choices, and shows how a move to slow down will - perhaps surprisingly - increase accessibility to the city services and activities that support healthy, sustainable lives and cities. Includes cases from cities in North and South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australasia Uses evidence-based research to support arguments about the benefits of slowing city transport Adopts a broad view of health, including the health of individuals, neighbourhoods and communities as well as economic health and environmental health Includes text boxes, diagrams and photos illustrating the slowing of transport in cities throughout the world, and a list of references including both academic sources and valuable websites

From award winning author Carol Weston comes an uplifting, heartfelt tale of bravery and strength in the face of loss and grief, perfect for tweens, teens and adults alike. "I will eagerly place it on my daughter's bookshelf, so that she, like Sofia, can find her own resilience and voice in our painful, joyful, speeding world."—New York Times Sofia lost her mother eight months ago, and her friends were 100% there for her. Now it's a new year and they're ready for Sofia to move on. But being a motherless daughter is hard to get used to, especially when you're only fourteen. Problem is, Sofia can't bounce back, can't recharge like a cellphone. She decides to write Dear Kate, an advice columnist for Fifteen Magazine, and is surprised to receive a fast reply. Soon the two are exchanging emails, and Sofia opens up and spills all, including a few worries that are totally embarrassing. Turns out even advice columnists don't have all the answers, and one day Sofia learns a secret that flips her world upside down. 2018 Best Fiction for Young Adults - American Library Association A 2018 Best Children's Book of the Year - Bank Street College of Education 2017 Best Fiction for Older Readers - Chicago Public Library 2019 2020 Young Hoosier Book Award Longlist Four STARRED Reviews Read the first page from Speed of Life: WARNING: This is kind of a sad story. At least at first. So if you don't like sad stories, maybe you shouldn't read this. I mean, I'd understand if you put it down and watched cat videos instead. I like cat videos too. Then again, this book is already in your hands. It starts and ends on January 1, and I was thinking of calling it The Year My Whole Life Changed. Or Life, Death, and Kisses. Or maybe even The Year I Grew Up. For me, being fourteen was hard. Really hard. Childhood was a piece of cake. Being a kid in New York City and spending summers in Spain, that was all pretty perfect, looking back. But being fourteen was like climbing a mountain in the rain. In flip-flops. I hoped I'd wind up in a different place, but I kept tripping and slipping and falling and wishing it weren't way too late to turn around. This book does have funny parts. And I learned two giant facts: Number one: everything can change in an instant—for worse, sure, but also for better. Number two: sometimes, if you just keep climbing, you get an amazing view. You see what's behind you and what's ahead of you and—the big surprise—what's inside you.

"In the city of Drakopolis, dragons and humans have co-existed for centuries. Dragons burn the city's garbage, taxi its busy citizens from place to place, and even compete in vicious underground battles for ganglike kins. But the dragons also compete in legal sports, like the spectacular aerial races that draw in cheering crowds by the tens of thousands. Abel is at just such a race when he witnesses the unthinkable. A long-shot competitor pulls off an impossible win--then flies into a destructive rage! Someone in the city is experimenting on dragons: hacking their DNA, rebuilding their bodies, and breaking their minds. Who could be driving the dragons berserk? Abel must find out who's behind the experiments and put a stop to them, and to do so he'll infiltrate the kins' underground street races on a long-shot dragon of his own"--Publisher.

Stitching the 24-Hour City reveals the intense speed of garment production and everyday life in Dongdaemun, a lively market in Seoul, South Korea. Once the site of uprisings against oppressive working conditions in the 1970s and 1980s, Dongdaemun has now become iconic for its creative economy, nightlife, fast-fashion factories, and shopping plazas. Seo Young Park follows the work of people who witnessed and experienced the rapidly changing marketplace from the inside. Through this approach, Park examines the meanings and politics of work in one of the world's most vibrant and dynamic global urban marketplaces. Park brings readers into close contact with the garment designers, workers, and traders who sustain the extraordinary speed of fast-fashion production and circulation, as well as the labor activists who challenge it. Attending to their narratives and practices of work, Park argues that speed, rather than being a singular drive of acceleration, is an entanglement of uneven paces of life, labor, the market, and the city itself. Stitching the 24-Hour City exposes the under-studied experiences with Dongdaemun fast fashion, peeling back layers of temporal politics of labor and urban space to record the human source of the speed that characterizes the never-ending movement of the 24-hour city.