The Boy Who Loved

The only thing you cannot plan in life is when and who to fall in love with . . . Raghu likes to show that there is nothing remarkable about his life--loving, middle-class parents, an elder brother he looks up to, and plans to study in an IIT. And that's how he wants things to seem--normal. Deep down, however, the guilt of letting his closest friend drown in the school's swimming pool gnaws at him. And even as he punishes himself by hiding from the world and shying away from love and friendship, he feels drawn to the fascinating Brahmi--a girl quite like him, yet so different. No matter how hard Raghu tries, he begins to care . . . Then life throws him into the deep end and he has to face his worst fears. Will love be strong enough to pull him out? The Boy Who Loved , first of a two-part romance, is warm and dark, edgy and quirky, wonderfully realistic and dangerously unreal.

On his first day of preschool, Dimitri’s vocal affection for everything is met with wary reactions—until his guileless words begin to take root and grow. Dimitri may be small, but his heart is as big and as open as a cloudless blue sky. “I love you,” Dimitri tells his new classmates at preschool. “I love you,” Dimitri tells the class guinea pig and the ants on the ground. “I love you,” Dimitri tells the paintbrushes and the tree with heart-shaped leaves. So why doesn’t anyone say “I love you” back? Could love also be expressed in unspoken ways? In a familiar story of navigating the social cues of new friendship, author Jane Porter and illustrator Maisie Paradise Shearring offer a thoughtful tribute to the tender ones—those who spread kindness simply by being, and who love without bounds.

The acclaimed, poignant story of a boy with Williams syndrome, a condition that makes people biologically incapable of distrust, a “well-researched, perceptive exploration of a rare genetic disorder seen through the eyes of a mother and son” (Kirkus Reviews). What would it be like to see everyone as a friend? Twelve-year-old Eli D’Angelo has a genetic disorder that obliterates social inhibitions, making him irrepressibly friendly, indiscriminately trusting, and unconditionally loving toward everyone he meets. It also makes him enormously vulnerable. On the cusp of adolescence, Eli lacks the innate skepticism that will help him navigate coming-of-age more safely—and vastly more successfully. In “a thorough overview of Williams syndrome and its thought-provoking paradox” (The New York Times), journalist Jennifer Latson follows Eli over three critical years of his life, as his mother, Gayle, must decide whether to shield Eli from the world or give him the freedom to find his own way and become his own person. Watching Eli’s artless attempts to forge connections, Gayle worries that he might never make a real friend—the one thing he wants most in life. “As the book’s perspective deliberately pans out to include teachers, counselors, family, friends, and, finally, Eli’s entire eighth-grade class, Latson delivers some unforgettable lessons about inclusion and parenthood,” (Publishers Weekly). The Boy Who Loved Too Much explores the way a tiny twist in a DNA strand can strip away the skepticism most of us wear as armor, and how this condition magnifies some of the risks we all face in opening our hearts to others. More than a case study of a rare disorder, The Boy Who Loved Too Much “is fresh and engaging…leavened with humor” (Houston Chronicle) and a universal tale about the joys and struggles of raising a child, of growing up, and of being different.

In this Parents' Choice Gold Award–winning book, Selig collects words, ones that stir his heart (Mama!) and ones that make him laugh (giggle). But what to do with so many luscious words? After helping a poet find the perfect words for his poem (lozenge, lemon, and licorice), he figures it out: His purpose is to spread the word to others. And so he begins to sprinkle, disburse, and broadcast them to people in need.

Learn about the early life of Abraham Lincoln in this picture book biography that Kirkus Reviews calls “a moving tribute to the power of books and words.” In a tiny log cabin a boy listened with delight to the storytelling of his ma and pa. He traced letters in sand, snow, and dust. He borrowed books and walked miles to bring them back. When he grew up, he became the sixteenth president of the United States. His name was Abraham Lincoln. He loved books. They changed his life. He changed the world.

The hilarious tale of what happened to a boy who ate too many bananas.

A memoir in the tradition of Lorna Sage's Bad Blood and Blake Morrison's When Did You Last See your Father? John Sutherland's childhood ended abruptly the day his father was killed at the beginning of World War Two - happily before he could kill any Germans. John's widowed mother fell in love with a new man and decamped to Argentina, leaving John to be looked after by various relatives - some more suited to raising children than others. It was an odd, unsettled childhood and John took refuge in books. He quickly learned how to fit in without disturbing people, and, in doing so, began to store up resentments as a child. These resentments, with the trigger of alcohol in later life, would one day explode - serially and for many years. The Boy Who Loved Books is an account of a disrupted childhood, but it is also an account of one man's often desperate love affair with reading matter. Books in many ways changed his life, propelling him to university, and sustaining him in the dark times that were to come. It is also a record of the shifting twentieth century and the profound changes that shook society and its ways of dealing with children in the institutions of family, school and university.

This enchanting picture book about a map-making boy who is stumped when a girl asks him for a map of the "perfect place" helps readers appreciate the charms of their own neighborhood--and even shows them how to make a map of it! The Mapmaker loves maps. He loves to collect them, to study them, and most of all, he loves to make them. But when a girl asks for a map of a perfect place, the Mapmaker is perplexed. She wants a map to a toes-in-the-sand-warm, X-marks-the-spot-place filled with treasures, where it smells like her birthday and she can zip around like a dragonfly. Surely, a place that is all of these things can't exist...can it? Well, after a fun-filled day of exploring the neighborhood, the Mapmaker will discover that the perfect place--home--has been right in front of him all along. Here is a picture book, as creative as it is charming, that celebrates home, and is a gentle reminder to look around and appreciate what surrounds you.