Cooler Than Fiction

Designed for public librarians, school media specialists, teachers, and anyone with an interest in supporting teen literacy, this book features 133 nonfiction booktalks to use with both voracious and reluctant teen readers. These booktalks cover a wide and varied range of nonfiction genres, including science, nature, history, biography, graphic novels, true crime, art, and much more. Each includes a set of discussion questions and sample project ideas which could be easily expanded into a classroom lesson plan or full library program. Also included are several guidelines for classroom integration, tips for making booktalks more interactive and interesting, and selections for further reading.

The creators of Hoot Owl, Master of Disguise show that dark shades and daring antics don’t necessarily lead to instant coolness in a giggle-worthy send-up of trying too hard. Look what Cat found on the playground! Sliding backward down the slide in these sunglasses is sure to make her look cool with extra cool on top . . . uh-oh! Of course, Cockatoo’s dancing on top of the seesaw wearing the glasses will definitely make him too cool for school . . . oh no! How about Pig’s standing up on the swing in the coveted shades? Drawn in by the silly story and the bold, graphic illustrations, kids will laugh out loud at the comeuppance of the animal poseurs and cheer for the savvy little chick who shows that coolness comes from just having regular old fun.

An inspiring visual guide to a richer life. “If there’s a thinker to steal from, it’s Jessica Hagy.”—Austin Kleon, author of Steal Like an Artist and Newspaper Blackout How to Be Interesting is passionate, positive, down-to-earth, and irrepressibly upbeat, combining fresh and pithy life lessons, often just a sentence or two, with deceptively simple diagrams and graphs. Each of the book's more than 100 spreads will nudge readers a little bit further out of their comfort zones and into a place where suddenly everything is possible. It’s about taking chance—but also about taking daily vacations. About being childlike, not childish. It’s about ideas, creativity, risk. It’s about trusting your talents and doing only what you want—but having the courage to get lost and see where the path leads. Because it’s what you don’t know that’s interesting.

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Anathem, Reamde, and Cryptonomicon comes an exciting and thought-provoking science fiction epic—a grand story of annihilation and survival spanning five thousand years. What would happen if the world were ending? A catastrophic event renders the earth a ticking time bomb. In a feverish race against the inevitable, nations around the globe band together to devise an ambitious plan to ensure the survival of humanity far beyond our atmosphere, in outer space. But the complexities and unpredictability of human nature coupled with unforeseen challenges and dangers threaten the intrepid pioneers, until only a handful of survivors remain . . . Five thousand years later, their progeny—seven distinct races now three billion strong—embark on yet another audacious journey into the unknown . . . to an alien world utterly transformed by cataclysm and time: Earth. A writer of dazzling genius and imaginative vision, Neal Stephenson combines science, philosophy, technology, psychology, and literature in a magnificent work of speculative fiction that offers a portrait of a future that is both extraordinary and eerily recognizable. As he did in Anathem, Cryptonomicon, the Baroque Cycle, and Reamde, Stephenson explores some of our biggest ideas and perplexing challenges in a breathtaking saga that is daring, engrossing, and altogether brilliant.

“A lovely, fascinating book, which brings science to life.” —Alan Lightman Combining science, history, and adventure, Tom Shachtman “holds the reader’s attention with the skill of a novelist” as he chronicles the story of humans’ four-centuries-long quest to master the secrets of cold (Scientific American). “A disarming portrait of an exquisite, ferocious, world-ending extreme,” Absolute Zero and the Conquest of Cold demonstrates how temperature science produced astonishing scientific insights and applications that have revolutionized civilization (Kirkus Reviews). It also illustrates how scientific advancement, fueled by fortuitous discoveries and the efforts of determined individuals, has allowed people to adapt to—and change—the environments in which they live and work, shaping man’s very understanding of, and relationship, with the world. This “truly wonderful book” was adapted into an acclaimed documentary underwritten by the National Science Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, directed by British Emmy Award winner David Dugan, and aired on the BBC and PBS’s Nova in 2008 (Library Journal). “An absorbing account to chill out with.” —Booklist

If you're new to running a library or looking for a refresher, this book can serve as your first reference source for school library operation, providing overview information on a wealth of topics, lists of resources for more in-depth information, and coverage of current topics such as Web 2.0, fundraising, digital booktalks, and cybersafety. With the extreme budget cuts most school libraries are facing, professional development resources for library support staff that improve library management efficiency are in great demand. This popular handbook provides an overview of many topics related to school libraries, collecting a vast amount of information together in one volume with an extensive index and selected additional resources. Written in an accessible style, it provides a quick reference and overview information for the operation of school libraries that both experienced and new library staff will find useful. Designed to be read both cover-to-cover and utilized as a ready reference, the second edition of Where Do I Start?: A School Library Handbook has updated subject material that includes coverage of Web 2.0 applications, library web pages, reading books to students, digital storytelling, future trends in library automation, and more.

Chuck Palahniuk’s world has always been, well, different from yours and mine. In his first collection of nonfiction, Chuck Palahniuk brings us into this world, and gives us a glimpse of what inspires his fiction. At the Rock Creek Lodge Testicle Festival in Missoula, Montana, average people perform public sex acts on an outdoor stage. In a mansion once occupied by The Rolling Stones, Marilyn Manson reads his own Tarot cards and talks sweetly to his beautiful actress girlfriend. Across the country, men build their own full-size castles and rocketships that will send them into space. Palahniuk himself experiments with steroids, works on an assembly line by day and as a hospice volunteer by night, and experiences the brutal murder of his father by a white supremacist. With this new direction, Chuck Palahniuk has proven he can do anything. BONUS: This ebook edition includes an excerpt from Chuck Palahniuk's Doomed.

Prepare to lose yourself in the heady, mythical expanse of The Vorrh, a daring debut that Alan Moore has called “a phosphorescent masterpiece” and “the current century's first landmark work of fantasy.” Next to the colonial town of Essenwald sits the Vorrh, a vast—perhaps endless—forest. It is a place of demons and angels, of warriors and priests. Sentient and magical, the Vorrh bends time and wipes memory. Legend has it that the Garden of Eden still exists at its heart. Now, a renegade English soldier aims to be the first human to traverse its expanse. Armed with only a strange bow, he begins his journey, but some fear the consequences of his mission, and a native marksman has been chosen to stop him. Around them swirl a remarkable cast of characters, including a Cyclops raised by robots and a young girl with tragic curiosity, as well as historical figures, such as writer Raymond Roussel and photographer and Edward Muybridge. While fact and fictional blend, and the hunter will become the hunted, and everyone’s fate hangs in the balance, under the will of the Vorrh.