Goodnight Habibi

A high contrast picture book - perfect for newborn eyes - takes us to a baby's room in a quiet Lebanese village. We join baby in saying goodnight to their surroundings, using local spoken words. A modern bilingual take on a classic bedtime story.Goodnight Habibi is a Montessori-inspired bedtime board book, designed in high contrast black and white, set in the Lebanese mountains. Words chosen are short and cute sounding, focusing on vowels and those cheeky ?? ?? and ? sounds! The art has simple and more complex shapes that babies love to stare at.

From Beirut, and from the south of Lebanon, three of the characters in the novel find themselves in Montreal, Canada, and through a set of unpredictable circumstances find themselves related to each other, where their lives get tangled and correlate, converge and diverge on different levels.Fadi is a young, handsome journalism student at McGill University, and chance brings him face to face with a locally born architect, Andre, who ends up challenging all his reservations thus far and irreversibly changes his life, challenging his resolve and inviting him ever so kindly and with patience and love, out of his self imposed prison, the culture he left behind, his upbringing and the limitations it imposes on him. What happens to them would come to alter their lives in ways thus far unimagined, and under no consideration into easy street. Some very tough decisions are ahead.Marwan is an ex-militiaman who now drives a taxi in the streets of Montreal, having escaped the ranks under unenviable and totally near-disastrous set of events that are otherwise potentially detrimental to his well-being and disruptive of his life. He is a newly wed man expecting a baby with his loving wife, but then things are not as simple as 1,2,3 in life, and he finds himself by chance, facing certain events that are to shake him to the foundations of his being, challenge his emotions, and threaten his loving marriage, with the baby on the way. His daydreaming, flashes of memory from the past, and the current predicament he finds himself in are at times a little too much to take for the smiling and very kind taxi driver, but the only way to face his future is not through the easy way out.Somehow related through destiny to the taxi driver, Mohammed is also in Montreal recently, though the two are not aware of this fact. A chance taxi fare pick-up brings them together after many years, where neither one was aware of the other's whereabouts, or whether one or the other was still alive. Mohammed a new refugee in Canada, is looking for work, and working on putting his shattered life together, and a fresh new start in a new city. For him too life has a few surprises, as he goes on about with his new life, and an eventual business trip to Las Vegas ends up in turbulence and disruption of life to no total fault of his own, and yet the involvement is way too much to bear, and tears and black destiny are around the corner.Andre meanwhile imposes silence upon himself, for a while at least, after he leaves the hospital after a prolonged stay, but only until his brother and his family find out by chance, it was not due to the loss of speech he was not talking, which opens the door wide to questions, interpretations and eventual confessions and then unexpected counter-confessions of his brother, who had been hiding a big secret most of his life. It all comes to the fore, and is to effect other interrelations between the different characters by association or by mere careless mistakes that are committed, coincidence, doubt, jealousy, prying and pursuit, charged human emotions, with what turns out to dire results for some and worse for others.Life is never easy, but still interesting, and worth every moment we live through. Not all is bad though. To some readers some of the events are a total surprise and may be had to believe, but are facts of life all the same. When two souls meet, things happen.

"It seems that the Satanists have won, doesn't it? Everything has been turned upside down. The world is frolicking within the death throes of the new age. It's an era of depravity, insolence, and evaporated dreams that have turned into nightmares. The Godless gorge themselves on an unwary comatose public, infatuated with reckless and vain desires, the war has begun. The 7 realms have been infiltrated by demonic generals and Satanic soldiers. All facets of life have been confiscated. Economies, traditions, entertainment, and teaching institutions have been taken over and mutated into something sinister and without mercy. Cities that were once the pearls of the old world have become nothing but ruins of smoke, poverty, and dilapidated infrastructures. Nothing was the same after Babylonia the Great waged a nuclear war on it's rivals.....and even before the Greatest War Waged, the world showed signs of madness and confusion. The GWW was mentioned by the religious scholars of the old world, Armageddon or Malhama Al Kubra, was prophesied by messengers of GOD in periods of time forgotten and lost. Only a few remained vigilant and faithful towards GOD, the balance of the world fell into the clutches of a Satanic regime determined to destroy the essential core of man. Within these perilous times the emergence of the Anti-Christ took center stage. The One-Eyed Chief deceiver became the prominent influencer for the detrimentally lost. The engine of evil. The demonic forces beckoned this diabolical leader's arrival......and when he arrived he unleashed his baggages of debauchery and hatred towards humans. The world was in complete chaos and division..." Although, the Light of the Ineffable can never be extinguished, this is a spiritual law. The demonic insurgence couldn't anticipate the resistance that took place. The psychological nets of stupidity and vanity were supposed to suppress the citizens of the 7 realms...but somehow a band of good humans broke through the indoctrination programs of Babylonia the Great. Some said that they were led by Angels. Some rumors suggested that they were the literal moving hand of GOD. Whatever the gossip, the Satanic generals couldn't have fathomed that there would be a counter force so efficient and surgical in their executions. This is a story of perseverance and an example of the human potential when unity is the defining factor.

“A sprawling tale of love, family, duty, war, and displacement. It is above all a stinging indictment of the ill-fated war in Iraq.” —Khaled Hosseini, #1 New York Times–bestselling author The bright and driven daughter of a Boston-area Irish-Arab family, Rita Khoury charts herself an ambitious path through Harvard to one of the best newspapers in the country. She is posted in cosmopolitan Beirut and dates a handsome Palestinian would-be activist. But when she is assigned to cover the America-led invasion of Baghdad in 2003, she finds herself unprepared for the warzone. Her lifeline is her interpreter and fixer Nabil al-Jumaili, an equally restless young man whose dreams have been restricted by life in a deteriorating dictatorship, not to mention his own seemingly impossible desires. As the war tears Iraq apart, personal betrayal and the horrors of conflict force Rita and Nabil out of the country and into twisting, uncertain fates. What lies in wait will upend their lives forever, shattering their own notions of what they’re entitled to in a grossly unjust world. Epic in scope, by turns satirical and heartbreaking, and speaking sharply to America’s current moment, Correspondents is a whirlwind story about displacement from one’s own roots, the violence America promotes both abroad and at home, and the resilience that allows families to remake themselves and endure even the most shocking upheavals. “[An] emotionally resonant, time-hopping page turner . . . Explores immigration, the effects of U.S. intervention, and the long arc of war.” —Huffington Post “An exploration of family, identity, and the price of war.” —Newsday “A surprisingly moving war novel alert to global violence and politics but thriving on the character level.” —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Small and mighty”—that’s the reputation of Michigan-based Leaps & Bounds Family Services, an early-learning nonprofit that is highly respected as a successful example of sustainability, collaboration and effectiveness in responding to community needs. Founded in 1988, Leaps & Bounds has been shaped by Executive Director Denise Dorsz and her team to respond to the early-learning needs of children and families especially in communities at risk. In this book, you will learn how Denise and her team were chosen to be part of a nationally funded program to promote innovation. The book tells how they used that opportunity to expand into multi-lingual, culturally diverse neighborhoods—a huge challenge for such educational programs. For the first time, Denise and her team share their successful strategies and nuts-and-bolts tips for building an effective nonprofit focused on this kind of community-based work. Readers visit one of Leaps & Bounds’ Play and Learn groups, step inside the organization’s highly regarded Home Visiting program, and hear from team members and parents in the program about why these approaches work so well. This book is ideal for general readers—parents, educators and community leaders who want to develop strong, local nonprofit organizations. It’s useful reading for classes and training sessions on becoming more effective in these professional disciplines. The book also includes specific tips you’ll want to share with others. Look for other books in The Bib to Backpack Learning Series.

Hers is the story of how an ordinary middle aged woman is transported from a humdrum existence; morally sedate and sexually naive, to pushing the boundaries of her conscience and experiencing pleasure of a magnitude she had never imagined. Her journey takes her into the realms of illicit love and clandestine liaisons which turn her life upside down and she finds herself dealing with love in it's highest manifestation as well as situations embroiled in secrecy, uncertainty and grief. The cost is the guilt she lives with having an ongoing affair with a married man, the sacrifices she makes; the concealed life she lives and how she compromises her career and, in the end, her security and trust.

About the book: Aaliyah a young black Muslim girl steps into Pierre S. A to work as an intern to learn independence and gain more skills. What she didn't plan to do was falling in love with her boss, Devonte Michel yet that's what turns into her main priority. Gravity doesn't catch Aaliyah and Devonte when love hits them and it's even worse for them as they're different. In race and religion. Society frowns upon their relationship and so do Aaliyah's parents so they make their daughter get together with a man they find befitting for Aaliyah leaving Devonte heartbroken however Aaliyah and Devonte's paths cross again and the undeniable sparks draw them close again even when they try resisting.

This is a powerful and deeply moving novel chronicling the Syrian War through the eyes of 14 year old Adam who has Asperger Syndrome. It has been adapted into a BBC Radio 4 play.'I have the urge to paint, and I can already see the painting in my head... horrible and beautiful all at the same time.' A gifted artist, Adam expresses the intimate sufferings of his family as they struggle through the Syrian conflict by painting with whatever materials he can find. Having been dependent on his family all his life, he must now cope with separation and loss, including the fates of his devoted sister and brothers who are all caught up in the acceleration of events and forced to live out the consequences both of their own choices and those made for them.The frightening and unpredictable changes, not only for Adam's family, but also for a once beautiful city and a whole nation, are unfolded with compassion, wit and imaginative force through a spectrum of shifting colors, moods and atmospheres. The novel blends political events, emotional drive and Arabian tradition through a unique perspective, whilst reminding the reader that what human beings really need is dignity, security and love.'An outstanding debut novel' BBC Front Row'A moving first novel, written with an insider's knowledge of the land and its people' The Times'This outstanding novel is a must-read for anyone who hopes to understand the beauty and character that exists within a country torn apart by war. To superimpose the experience of Asperger's upon the experience of war is Sukkar's great achievement and brings a heart-breaking clarity to the suffering, the strength and the hopes of ordinary people caught up in political mayhem.' The Booktrust