The Most Beautiful Roof In The World

From Newbery Honor author Kathryn Lasky comes a fascinating journey through the rainforest canopy that's perfect for budding environmentalists.

A story of adventure, survival, courage, and hope, set in the vivid Himalayan landscape of Tibet and India. Tash lives in Tibet, where as a practicing Buddhist she must follow many rules to avoid the wrath of the occupying Chinese soldiers. Life remains peaceful as long as Tash, her family, and their community hide their religion and don’t mention its leader, the Dalai Lama. The quiet is ruptured when a man publicly sets himself on fire to protest the occupation. In the crackdown that follows, soldiers break into Tash’s house and seize her parents. Tash barely escapes, and soon she and her best friend, Sam, along with two borrowed yaks, flee across the mountains, where they face blizzards, hunger, a treacherous landscape, and the constant threat of capture. It’s a long, dangerous trip to the Indian border and safety—and not all will make it there. This action-packed novel tells a story of courage, hope, and the powerful will to survive, even in the most desperate circumstances.

A Vietnamese family flees its war-torn home and resettles in California, in a novel that offers a “brilliant exploration of exile, loss, and identity” (Robert Olen Butler). Told from multiple perspectives and spanning several decades, Grass Roof, Tin Roof begins with the story of Tran, a Vietnamese writer facing government persecution, who flees her homeland during the exodus of 1975 and brings her two children to the West. Here, she marries a Danish American man who has survived a different war. He promises understanding and guidance—but the psychic consequences of his past soon hinder his relationships with the family, as the children, for whom the war is now a distant shadow, struggle to understand the world around them on their own terms. In delicate, innovative prose, Strom’s characters experience the collision of cultures and the spiritual aftermath of war on the most visceral level. Grass Roof, Tin Roof is “an affecting study on the slippery nature of home” (Los Angeles Times). “[Strom] explores the mysteries of loss, culture and identity, with skill, poignancy and imagination.” —Detroit Free Press

The Room on the Roof is a timeless coming-of-age novel that will resonate with a whole new generation of readers. Written by renowned author Ruskin Bond when he was just seventeen, it is the story of Rusty, a teenage Anglo-Indian boy who is orphaned and has to live with his English guardian in the stifling European quarter of Dehra Dun. Unhappy with the strict ways of his guardian, Rusty runs away from home to live with his Indian friends into the dream-bright world of the bazaar, Hindu festivals and all manner of Indian life. Rusty is enthralled, and is lost forever to the prim proprieties of the claustrophic European community.

This book is based on the life of a commercial diver working in the oil and gas industry from the cowboy days of the early 1980s around Asia, India, Australasia, and Africa to the safety-orientated twenty-first century in the North Sea and Gulf of Mexico. You will travel with the characters that work in this world and see the countries that they visit. It’s a wild and dangerous job, and most people would struggle to get their head around the fact that people actually do this for a living. But that’s not all. You also get to travel with a traveller, who, when not submerged under the water building or fixing oil fields, is sitting on a surfboard riding the waves that he dreamt about when he was growing up. This is proof that dreams can turn into reality if you want to push yourself over the edge of your safety zone. Dreams become reality if you work on it and face your fears. Give it a shot and see how you go.

Join the adventure of a lifetime as you explore the Amazon Rain Forest! Follow the trail of the jungle's most magnificent creatures, including silent jaguars, leaping monkeys, and pink river dolphins in The Field Guide to Rain Forest Animals. Learn the difference between New World and Old World monkeys, how to detect the presence of a Dwarf Caiman crocodile, and why Vampire Bats can walk and run. This unique interactive journal is filled with photographs, maps, and detailed illustrations of eight interesting jungle animals. At the end of this book kids can continue the adventure by assembling their animals amidst a colorful diorama for their own museum-ready display!

Describes the work of Meg Lowman in the rainforest canopy, an area unexplored until the last ten years and home to previously unknown species of plants and animals.

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER SILVER MEDALIST for the National Outdoor Book Award for Natural History Literature From the bestselling author of H is for Hawk, a brilliant and insightful work about our relationship to the natural world Our world is a fascinating place, teeming not only with natural wonders that defy description, but complex interactions that create layers of meaning. Helen Macdonald is gifted with a special lens that seems to peer right through it all, and she shares her insights--at times startling, nostalgic, weighty, or simply entertaining--in this masterful collection of essays. From reflections on science fiction to the true story of an Iranian refugee's flight to the UK, Macdonald has a truly omnivorous taste when it comes to observations of both the banal and sublime. Peppered throughout are reminisces of her own life, from her strange childhood in an estate owned by the Theosophical Society to watching total eclipses of the sun, visits to Uzbek solar power plants, eccentric English country shows, and desert hunting camps in the Gulf States. These essays move from personal experiences into wider meditations about love and loss and how we build the world around us. Whether more journalistic in tone, or literary--even formally experimental--each piece is generous, lyrical, and speaks to one another. Macdonald creates a strong thematic undertow that quietly takes the reader along piece to piece and sets them down, finally, at a place they've never been before.