You Must Be This Tall To Ride

"The story of two friends, Frank and Harold, who do everything together and want to ride a roller coaster. But one of them is not tall enough. What are these friends to do?"--

Compelling stories have the power to generate infinite wonder: It's nearly impossible to imagine how the author began, and yet we sense there's much more beyond the final word. It's this mystery–a combination of inspiration and craft, smoke and mirrors–that makes writing feel momentous. But it can also feel overwhelming, causing us to become small, scared, not quite ready for the "big" rides, such as finishing that story, that novel, and finding the courage to share it with the world. In You Must Be This Tall to Ride, you'll find 20 works of fiction and nonfiction by acclaimed contemporary authors, each offering fresh perspective on ''coming of age'' (a story to which we can all relate), as well as exclusive personal essays and practical exercises.In their own words, these writers grant you a guided tour of craft with unparalleled access to the process behind their creation, including how to: • grow a story from the seed of an image or sentence • allow experiments with language to lead you to plot • turn even the most unlikely characters into heroes • transform raw anecdotes from your own life into compelling fiction and essay Join 20 writers as we grow up and down, taking a rollercoaster ride in stories. You'll not only begin to understand what makes the wheels of a story turn, you'll also gain the tools and strategies to transform lost characters and runaway plots into the greatest show on earth. So go ahead, step right up. Listen for the calliope music, and take your place in line. Your ride has just begun.CONTRIBUTORS: • Steve Almond • Aimee Bender • Kate Bernheimer • Ryan Boudinot • Judy Budnitz • Dan Chaon • Brock Clarke • Michael Czyzniejewski • Stuart Dybek • Michael Martone • Antonya Nelson • Peter Orner • Jack Pendarvis • Benjamin Percy • Andrew Porter • Chad Simpson • George Singleton • Brady Udall • Laura van den Berg • Ryan Van Meter

A thoughtful, down-to-earth, contemporary guide to help partners identify and address relationship-killing behavior patterns in their own lives. Good people can be bad at relationships. One night during his divorce, after one too many vodkas and a call with a phone-in-therapist who told him to “journal his feelings,” Matthew Fray started a blog. He needed to figure out how his ex-wife went from the eighteen-year-old college freshman who adored him to the angry woman who thought he was an asshole and left him. As he pieced together the story of his marriage and its end, Matthew began to realize a hard truth: even though he was a decent guy, he was a bad husband. As he shared raw, uncomfortable, and darkly humorous first-person stories about the lessons he’d learned from his failed marriage, a peculiar thing happened. Matthew started to gain a following. In January 2016 a post he wrote—“She Divorced Me Because I left the Dishes by the Sink”—went viral and was read over four million times. Filtered through the lens of his own surprising, life-changing experience and his years counseling couples, This Is How Your Marriage Ends exposes the root problem of so many relationships that go wrong. We simply haven’t been taught any of the necessary skills, Matthew explains. In fact, it is sometimes the assumption that we are acting on good intentions that causes us to alienate our partners and foment mistrust. With the humorous, entertaining, and counterintuitive approach of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, and the practical insights of The 5 Love Languages, This is How Your Marriage Ends helps readers identify relationship-killing behavior patterns in their own lives, and offers solutions to break free from the cycles of dysfunction and destruction. It is must-read for every partner no matter what stage–beginning, middle, or even end—of your relationship.

This book takes the creativity and inventiveness of the maker movement and applies that energy in a new way to help children learn across all subject areas as well as broaden their world view. Traditional library literacy programs have helped many children foster a love of reading, but to prepare this next generation of learners, this programming needs to be modified to include technology. The inherent creativity and inventiveness of the Maker Movement, embracing both classic and innovative technological activities, provides the perfect bridge to invigorate, expand, and update these programs. This alternative to conventional library literacy programming will help children learn throughout all subject areas, see additional possibilities, and make connections in the world around them. With this guide, readers can discover how to apply maker literacy to introduce connections that help children better understand that their experiences in life are interrelated—that art can be made on a 3D printer and that science and technology are an essential part of design. This holistic approach provides a myriad of creative opportunities for both teaching staff and the children they serve. A great resource for youth services librarians in public libraries, this guide to infusing library programs with technology and maker activities to motivate learning will also appeal to preschool and elementary librarians, educators, and parents.

By using a linguistic and anthropological framework, this pioneering book offers a natural history of intensity in the Anthropocene.

Syndicated by King Features, through more than 20 periodicals and nearly 900 newspapers, "Baby Blues" has a daily following of 40 million fans worldwide and the Web site at babyblues.com gets 300,000 hits per month. This is the 18th collection of the popular column.

The adventures in parenthood of Darryl and Wanda MacPherson continue, with their depictions of the chaos and absurd humor that goes hand in hand with raising children.