Agnes Baker Pilgrim, known to most as Grandma Aggie, is in her nineties and is the oldest living member of the Takelma Tribe, one of the Confederated Tribes of Siletz. A descendant of both spiritual and political tribal leaders, Grandma Aggie travels tirelessly around the world to keep traditions alive, to help those in need, and to be a voice for the voiceless, helping everyone to remember to preserve our Earth for animals and each other in a spiritual environment. Considered an excellent speaker, she has mesmerized her audience wherever she appears, and now her wit, wisdom, memories, advice, stories and spirituality have been captured for all to hear. Honored as a “Living Cultural Legend” by the Oregon Council of the Arts, Grandma Aggie here speaks about her childhood memories, about her tribe and her life as a child growing up in an area that often didn’t allow Indians and dogs into many public places, as well as about such contemporary issues as bullying, teen suicide, drugs and alcohol, Pope Francis, President Obama, water conservation, climate change, and much more. This is an amazing recording of one of the oldest and most important voices of the First Nation and of the world. Her stories and advice will mesmerize and captivate you, as well as provide a blueprint for how all the inhabitants of the earth can live together in harmony, spirituality, and peace.

The Astonishing Color of After meets Eleanor & Park in this breathtaking and beautifully surreal story about a friendship between two teens that just might shake the earth around them or at the very least make them face some painful truths about the nature of what drives us apart…and what brings us together. Billy Sloat and Lydia Lemon don’t have much in common, unless you count growing up on the same (wrong) side of the tracks, the lack of a mother, and a persistent loneliness that has inspired creative coping mechanisms. When the lives of these two loners are thrust together, Lydia’s cynicism is met with Billy’s sincere optimism, and both begin to question their own outlook on life. On top of that, weird happenings including an impossible tornado and an all-consuming fog are cropping up around them—maybe even because of them. And as the two grow closer and confront bigger truths about their pasts, they must also deal with such inconveniences as a narcissistic rock star, a war between unicorns and dragons, and eventually, of course, the apocalypse. With a unique mix of raw emotion, humor, and heart, the surreal plotline pulls readers through an epic exploration of how caring for others makes us vulnerable—and how utterly pointless life would be if we didn’t.

Little Girl in a Messed Up World By: Tonya Parker Tonya Parker was born on February 20, 1963, in Richmond, Virginia. That day her mother was informed that she was born with a veil on her face. She was born with a special gift; this was an old folks’ saying. She had the gift of insight, and she carries her gift until this day. She was raised in her native town of Wakefield and Pocohontas, Virginia, where she grew to know that she was very special. Tonya was blessed to be a part of two great generations. The Robinson family, where her great-great-grandmother, Sarah Robinson, who was a Black Native American. Then, Sarah met her great-great-grandfather, Charlie Parker, who was a Black Native American who was a shoemaker. The two were raised and groomed by old family traditions that were passed on from generation to generation. But this child was gifted with many talents, and the family did know this. Tonya Parker would always see and say the strangest things as a child. She would have the people in town listening to her little made-up stories. She would even have everybody believing some of her stories. And through this talent she created, they were to endure the pain and the struggle that makes her stories real and heartbreaking. She lived through being molested as a child. So she wrote the diary that she calls Little Girl in a Messed Up World. This she shares with the world. While coming out and enduring other sexual abuses to finding the Lord, she wrote, He Touched Me. And now coming out of that to being abused as a wife and a mother, she wrote Markese Strong: A Miracle, and some poems to go along with this.

In the 1950s Robert Coles began studying, living among, and, above all, listening to American children. The results of his efforts -- revealed in five volumes published between 1967 and 1977 -- constitute one of the most searching and vigorous social studies ever undertaken by one person in the United States. Here, heard often in their own voices, are America's "children of crisis": African American children caught in the throes of the South's racial integration; The children of impoverished migrant workers in Appalachia; Children whose families were transformed by the migration from South to North, from rural to urban communities; Latino, Native American, and Eskimo children in the poorest communities of the American West; The children of America's wealthiest families confronting the burden of their own privilege. This volume restores to print a masterwork of psychological and sociological inquiry -- a book that, in its focus on how children learn and develop in the face of rapid change and social upheaval, speaks directly and pointedly to our own times.