Growing Relationship

Communication is everything. Connect with loved ones, be a more effective speaker in the workplace, and get your message across clearly by learning how to be a better communicator. We learn to talk when we’re very young, but many of us have never learned to communicate. Conveying a message clearly is more of an art form than a science, and those that have learned to master it become more successful, confident, and dare we say it - popular.

Our preteen years, ages nine to 13, can present some of the most difficult times in our young lives, a period of tremendous physical and emotional change. We're eager to leave the "kid" stage, yet we're uncertain about what adolescence will bring; we start hearing the familiar refrain "wait until you're older" far too often. Chicken Soup for the Preteen Soul is a companion guide for these transitional years.

Sicilee and Maya have been rivals since elementary school. Now in high school, they dislike each other more than ever. Sicilee is the center of the most popular group at Clifton Springs, and Maya is the heart of the hip, trendy set. And neither of them is likely to notice Waneeda, who prefers to eat candy and work as little as possible. None of these girls has a thing in common until Cody Lightfoot, the most drop-dead gorgeous boy imaginable, joins the student body, causing every girl’s head to turn.

James and Alex have barely anything in common anymore - least of all their experiences in high school, where James is a popular senior and Alex is suddenly an outcast. But at home, there is Henry, the precocious 10-year-old across the street, who eagerly befriends them both. And when Alex takes up running, there is James’s friend Nathen, who unites the brothers in moving and unexpected ways.

For many parents of troubled teenagers, a therapeutic program that takes the child from the home for a period of time offers some respite from the daily tumult of acting out, lies, and tension that has left the family under siege. However, just as the teenager is embarking on a journey of self-discovery, skill-development, and emotional maturation, so parents too need to use this time to recognize that their own patterns may have contributed to their family's downward spiral. This is The Parallel Process.

Growing Yourself Back Up is John Lee's book that thousands of therapists recommend to their clients every year. This lecture will help the listener recognize, prevent, and diffuse regression in ourselves and others. He teaches, for example, that adults cannot be abandoned, they can only be left; if we're feeling abandoned we're regressing. He also reminds us that no matter how overwhelmed we are, adults always have options; if we believe we don't, we're in a regression.

Over half a million listeners have joined the journey of Instagram sensations Ashley and Dino Petrone. Through their popular online community Arrows and Bow, Ashley and Dino share their adventures, mishaps, and joys of building a life together using an unexpected element: design.

Taylor Edwards’ family might not be the closest-knit - everyone is a little too busy and overscheduled - but for the most part, they get along just fine. Then Taylor’s dad gets devastating news, and her parents decide that the family will spend one last summer all together at their old lake house in the Pocono Mountains. Crammed into a place much smaller and more rustic than they are used to, they begin to get to know each other again. And Taylor discovers that the people she thought she had left behind haven’t actually gone anywhere.

Award-winning educator and author Alan Lawrence Sitomer’s engaging young adult novels have been named among the ALA’s Best Books of the Year. This first tale in his planned Nerd Girls series follows 13-year-old self-proclaimed “dorkasaurus” Maureen and her fellow social outcasts Alice and Barbara. When Maureen discovers that the Pretty, Popular, Perfect girls are planning a mean trick on Alice, she decides it’s finally time to take a stand. Signing up to compete against the ThreePees in a talent show, Maureen plans her revenge.

Lesbian. Bisexual. Queer. Transgender. Straight. Curious. This book is for everyone, regardless of gender or sexual preference. This book is for anyone who's ever dared to wonder. This book is for you. There's a long-running joke that after "coming out", a lesbian, gay guy, bisexual, or trans person should receive a membership card and instruction manual. This is that instruction manual. You're welcome.

In the third book of Sydney Taylor's classic children's series, Ella finds a boyfriend and Henny disagrees with Papa over her curfew. Thus continues the tale of a Jewish family of five sisters, Ella, Henny, Sarah, Charlotte, and Gertie, living at the turn of the century in New York's Lower East Side. Entertaining and educational, this audiobook brings to life the joys and fears of that time and place.

Parenting is hard. So is being a peacemaker in a violent world. It Runs in the Family is a book about how parents can create lasting and meaningful bulwarks between their kids and the violence endemic in our culture. It posits discipline without spanks or slaps or threats of violence while considering how to raise thoughtful, compassionate, fearless young people committed to social and political change - without scaring, hectoring, or scarring them with all the wrongs in the world.

In Runaway, Emerson Watts continues her fight against the twisted Stark Enterprises while her brain remains trapped inside the body of super model Nikki Howard. Whisked away to Brandon Stark’s secluded love nest, Em has alienated her true love Christopher and her parents, while hoping to learn the terrifying secret Nikki—in her own new body—harbors.

All over the country, a strange phenomenon is happening. Some teenagers who die aren't staying dead. They are coming back to life, but they are no longer the same - they stutter, and their reactions to everything are slower. Termed "living impaired" or "differently biotic," they are doing their best to fit into a society that doesn't want them. Fitting in is hard enough when you don't have the look or attitude, but when almost everyone else is alive and you're not, it's close to impossible.

First time I saw her was in the mirror on my locker door. I'd kicked my swim gear onto the bottom shelf and was reaching to the top for my calc book when she opened her locker across the hall. She had a streaked blonde ponytail dangling out the back of her baseball cap.... We slammed our lockers in unison and turned. Her eyes met mine. "Hi," she said, smiling. My stomach fluttered. "Hi," I answered automatically. She was new. Had to be. I would've noticed her. She sauntered away, but not before I caught a glimpse of her T-shirt. It said: IMRU? Am I what?

A distinctive new voice: Rex Ogle's story of starting middle school on the free lunch program is timely, heartbreaking, and true. Free Lunch is the story of Rex Ogle's first semester in sixth grade. Rex and his baby brother often went hungry, wore secondhand clothes, and were short of school supplies, and Rex was on his school's free lunch program. Grounded in the immediacy of physical hunger and the humiliation of having to announce it every day in the school lunch line, Rex's is a compelling story of a more profound hunger - that of a child for his parents' love and care.

Alistair Cleary is the kid who everyone trusts. Fiona Loomis is "not" the typical girl next door. Alistair hasn't really thought of her since they were little kids until she shows up at his doorstep with a proposition: she wants him to write her biography. What begins as an odd vanity project gradually turns into a frightening glimpse into the mind of a potentially troubled girl. Fiona says that in her basement, there's a portal that leads to a magical world where a creature called the Riverman is stealing the souls of children.

In an all too familiar scenario, played out in millions of homes every day, children who grow up in addictive families abide by certain rules: don't talk, don't trust, don't feel. The rigid survival roles and youthful coping behaviors they take on, such as the responsible child, the adjuster, the placater, and the acting-out child can eventually contribute to problems of depression, loneliness, and addiction in adulthood.

Fifteen-year-old Reed Brennan wins a scholarship to Easton Academy---the golden ticket away from her pill-popping mother and run-of-the-mill suburban life. But when she arrives on the beautiful, tradition-steeped campus of Easton, everyone is just a bit more sophisticated, a bit more gorgeous, and a lot wealthier than she ever thought possible. Reed realizes that even though she has been accepted to Easton, Easton has not accepted her.

In the tradition of Michael Pollan, Mark Hyman, and Andrew Weil, pioneering integrative pediatric neurologist Maya Shetreat-Klein, MD, reveals the shocking contents of children's food, how it's seriously harming their bodies and brains, and what we can do about it. And she presents the first nutritional plan for getting and keeping children healthy - a plan that any family can follow.