From The Roots Up

Dez’s grandmother has passed away. Grieving, and with nowhere else to go, they’re living in a group home. On top of everything else, Dez is navigating a new relationship and coming into their identity as a Two-Spirit person. Miikwan is crushing on the school’s new kid Riel, but doesn’t really understand what Dez is going through. Will she learn how to be a supportive ally to her best friend? Elder Geraldine is doing her best to be supportive, but she doesn’t know how to respond when the gendered protocols she’s grown up with are being thrown into question. Will Dez be comfortable expressing their full identity? And will their community relearn the teachings and overcome prejudice to celebrate them for who they are?

English from the Roots Up teaches 100 of the most-used Greek and Latin root words. It will help your child build vocabulary and comprehension, as well as figure out unknown words by deciphering their roots, prefixes, and suffixes. Grades 2-12.

Dez and Miikwan’s stories continue in this sequel to Surviving the City. Dez’s grandmother has passed away. Grieving, and with nowhere else to go, she’s living in a group home. On top of everything else, Dez is navigating a new relationship and coming into her identity as a Two-Spirit person. Miikwan is crushing on the school’s new kid Riel, but doesn’t really understand what Dez is going through. Will she learn how to be a supportive ally to her best friend? Elder Geraldine is doing her best to be supportive, but she doesn’t know how to respond when the gendered protocols she’s grown up with that are being thrown into question. Will Dez be comfortable expressing her full identity? And will her community relearn the teachings and overcome prejudice to celebrate her for who she is?

Miikwan and Dez are best friends. Miikwan is Anishinaabe; Dez is Inninew. Together, the teens navigate the challenges of growing up in an urban landscape—they’re so close, they even completed their Berry Fast together. However, when Dez’s grandmother becomes too sick, Dez is told she can’t stay with her anymore. With the threat of a group home looming, Dez can’t bring herself to go home and disappears. Miikwan is devastated, and the wound of her missing mother resurfaces. Will Dez’s community find her before it’s too late? Will Miikwan be able to cope if they don’t?

"Up By Roots is a manual for landscape architects, architects, urban foresters, and planners who are designing, specifying, installing and managing trees in the built environment. Part One discusses basic soil science and tree biology and their relationship to healthy trees. Part Two explains the process of planning and implementing landscape designs to ensure healthy trees that can improve the quality of places where people live, work and play. The book contains numberous illustrations and data in graphic form to provide guidance in the design of healthy soils and trees."--Pub. desc.

A. Nicole Alexander started life as a bright-eyed young girl just like many other women. She had dreams of finding the perfect life, but life had other plans for her. In her memoir, Digging Up Roots, Nicole writes of the search for her true path after almost two decades of living a lesbian lifestyle. "Maybe you were born this way." "You can't help who you love." "God is love and He loves you regardless." That's what the world wanted Nicole to believe about her lesbian lifestyle. The church told her she was demon possessed, an abomination to God's law, but what about the Christian women with whom she was intimate? She never felt that she chose to have certain feelings; she did, however, make the choice to stop fighting her urges. Through it all, she knew there was much more to her story than what others could see, but with so many contradictions in her life, it took Nicole years to make the final decision about what type of life she wanted to live. Nicole offers a practical look at how she became entangled in homosexuality, and how she fought her way out with God's help by digging up the roots and planting the seeds for a new life.

Hailed by Andre Gide as the patron saint of all outsiders, Simone Weil's short life was ample testimony to her beliefs. In 1942 she fled France along with her family, going firstly to America. She then moved back to London in order to work with de Gaulle. Published posthumously The Need for Roots was a direct result of this collaboration. Its purpose was to help rebuild France after the war. In this, her most famous book, Weil reflects on the importance of religious and political social structures in the life of the individual. She wrote that one of the basic obligations we have as human beings is to not let another suffer from hunger. Equally as important, however, is our duty towards our community: we may have declared various human rights, but we have overlooked the obligations and this has left us self-righteous and rootless. She could easily have been issuing a direct warning to us today, the citizens of Century 21.

“Messy Roots is a laugh-out-loud, heartfelt, and deeply engaging story of their journey to find themself--as an American, as the daughter of Chinese immigrants, as a queer person, and as a Wuhanese American in the middle of a pandemic.”—Malaka Gharib, author of I Was Their American Dream After spending her early years in Wuhan, China, riding water buffalos and devouring stinky tofu, Laura immigrates to Texas, where her hometown is as foreign as Mars—at least until 2020, when COVID-19 makes Wuhan a household name. In Messy Roots, Laura illustrates her coming-of-age as the girl who simply wants to make the basketball team, escape Chinese school, and figure out why girls make her heart flutter. Insightful, original, and hilarious, toggling seamlessly between past and present, China and America, Gao’s debut is a tour de force of graphic storytelling.