The Girl And The Bicycle

A wordless picture book in which a girl sees a bicycle she wants to buy, works hard for a kindly neighbor to earn the money for it, then gets a pleasant surprise.

A determined 12-year-old girl bikes across the country in this quirky and charming debut middle grade novel. Introverted Bicycle has lived most of her life at the Mostly Silent Monastery in Washington, D.C. When her guardian, Sister Wanda, announces that Bicycle is going to attend a camp where she will learn to make friends, Bicycle says no way and sets off on her bike for San Francisco to meet her idol, a famous cyclist, certain he will be her first true friend. Who knew that a ghost would haunt her handlebars and that she would have to contend with bike-hating dogs, a bike-loving horse, bike-crushing pigs, and a mysterious lady dressed in black. Over the uphills and downhills of her journey, Bicycle discovers that friends are not such a bad thing to have after all, and that a dozen cookies really can solve most problems.

From the creator of The Boy and the Airplane, a touching wordless picture book about a little girl, a shiny bicycle, and the meaning of persistence—with an unexpected payoff. A little girl sees a shiny new bicycle in the shop window. She hurries home to see if she has enough money in her piggy bank, but when she comes up short, she knocks on the doors of her neighbors, hoping to do their yardwork. They all turn her away except for a kindly old woman. The woman and the girl work through the seasons, side by side. They form a tender friendship. When the weather warms, the girl finally has enough money for the bicycle. She runs back to the store, but the bicycle is gone! What happens next shows the reward of hard work and the true meaning of generosity. Wordless, timeless, and classic, The Girl and the Bicycle carries a message of selflessness and sweet surprises and makes an ideal gift for graduations and other special occasions.

The Girls' Bicycle Handbook is for women cyclists everywhere who need practical no-nonsense advice and information on cycling, and cycling in style. Whether you're a committed bike commuter or a complete novice, cycling entrepreneur and blogger Caz Nicklin gives the low-down on making cycling part of your lifestyle. From choosing the right bike for your needs to looking stylish and comfortable whatever the weather, and from combatting 'helmet hair' to road safety and fast repairs, The Girls' Bicycle Handbook tells you everything you need to know about life on two wheels.

Louise Belinda Bellflower lives in Rochester, New York, in 1896. She spends her days playing with her brother, Joe. But Joe gets to ride a bicycle, and Louise Belinda doesn’t. In fact, Joe issues a solemn warning: If girls ride bikes, their faces will get so scrunched up, eyes bulging from the effort of balancing, that they’ll get stuck that way FOREVER! Louise Belinda is appalled by this nonsense, so she strikes out to discover the truth about this so-called “bicycle face.” Set against the backdrop of the women’s suffrage movement, Born to Ride is the story of one girl’s courageous quest to prove that she can do everything the boys can do, while capturing the universal freedom and accomplishment children experience when riding a bike.

Love, sex, death....and English as a foreign language. The Island of Bicycle Dancers is the coming-of-age-story of twenty-year-old Yurika Song, a Korean-Japanese woman who comes from Japan to New York City for a summer to work with her Korean relatives and improve her English. Yurika's friends back home have always joked that she is half-sushi/half-kim-chi. But cross-Asian ethnicities turn out to be far less jarring than her introduction to New York life, the world of bicycle messengers and the street culture in which they thrive. On one level this is a splendid tale of mistaken love-Yurika falls hard for an attractive, but dangerous, Puerto Rican bicycle messenger nicknamed "Bone." But on another, deeper level, our heroine finds freedom in this new language, which to her "is like a huge octopus, very clever and sometimes hard to catch but with so many wild and beautiful writhing limbs."

The bicycle is a common, yet unique mechanical contraption in our world. In spite of this, the bike's physical and mechanical principles are understood by a select few. You do not have to be a genius to join this small group of people who understand the physics of cycling. This is your guide to fundamental principles (such as Newton's laws) and the book provides intuitive, basic explanations for the bicycle's behaviour. Each concept is introduced and illustrated with simple, everyday examples. Although cycling is viewed by most as a fun activity, and almost everyone acquires the basic skills at a young age, few understand the laws of nature that give magic to the ride. This is a closer look at some of these fun, exhilarating, and magical aspects of cycling. In the reading, you will also understand other physical principles such as motion, force, energy, power, heat, and temperature.