This beautifully illustrated story connects past and present as a girl bakes a chocolate cake with her father and learns about her grandfather harvesting cacao beans in West Africa. Chocolate is the perfect treat, everywhere! As a little girl and her father bake her birthday cake together, Daddy tells the story of her Grandpa Cacao, a farmer from the Ivory Coast in West Africa. In a land where elephants roam and the air is hot and damp, Grandpa Cacao worked in his village to harvest cacao, the most important ingredient in chocolate. "Chocolate is a gift to you from Grandpa Cacao," Daddy says. "We can only enjoy chocolate treats thanks to farmers like him." Once the cake is baked, it's ready to eat, but this isn't her only birthday present. There's a special surprise waiting at the front door . . .

Celebrated artist and lead character designer of Brave, Ratatouille, and Despicable Me, Carter Goodrich, shows that sometimes, even the prickliest people—or the crankiest cacti—need a little love. Hank is the prickliest cactus in the entire world. He sits in a pot in a window that faces the empty desert, which is just how he likes it. So, when all manner of creatures—from tumbleweed to lizard to owl—come to disturb his peace, Hank is annoyed. He doesn’t like noise, he doesn’t like rowdiness, and definitely does not like hugs. But the thing is, no one is offering one. Who would want to hug a plant so mean? Hank is beginning to discover that being alone can be, well, lonely. So he comes up with a plan to get the one thing he thought he would never need: a hug from a friend.

From Children's Literature Legacy Award-winning author Nikki Grimes and acclaimed illustrator Elizabeth Zunon comes an adventurous bath time story. Bath time is full of magic. The faucet flows like a waterfall, the bathroom floor is a distant shore, toy boats sail against the waves. An imagination-fueled adventure on the high seas is just what it takes to get little one clean.

East Texas, the 1930s—the Great Depression. Award-winning author Jonah Winter's father grew up with seven siblings in a tiny house on the edge of town. In this picture book, Winter shares his family history in a lyrical text that is clear, honest, and utterly accessible to young readers, accompanied by Kimberly Bulcken Root's rich, gorgeous illustrations. Here is a celebration of family and of making do with what you have—a wonderful classroom book that's also perfect for children and parents to share.

Publishers Weekly’s Top 10 Cookbooks for Spring 2015 Pomegranates and pistachios. Floral waters and cinnamon. Bulgur wheat, lentils, and succulent lamb. These lush flavors of Maureen Abood's childhood, growing up as a Lebanese-American in Michigan, inspired Maureen to launch her award-winning blog, Rose Water & Orange Blossoms. Here she revisits the recipes she was reared on, exploring her heritage through its most-beloved foods and chronicling her riffs on traditional cuisine. Her colorful culinary guides, from grandparents to parents, cousins, and aunts, come alive in her stories like the heady aromas of the dishes passed from their hands to hers. Taking an ingredient-focused approach that makes the most of every season’s bounty, Maureen presents more than 100 irresistible recipes that will delight readers with their evocative flavors: Spiced Lamb Kofta Burgers, Avocado Tabbouleh in Little Gems, and Pomegranate Rose Sorbet. Weaved throughout are the stories of Maureen’s Lebanese-American upbringing, the path that led her to culinary school and to launch her blog, and life in Harbor Springs, her lakeside Michigan town.

Achieve lasting health—without cutting calories or following dieting “rules”! Instead of obsessing about the quantity of food you eat, shift your focus to the quality, say Noelle Tarr and Stefani Ruper. The popular hosts of the Well-Fed Women podcast want you to make sure you’re getting enough food so that your body has the fuel and nourishment it needs to support a healthy, long, and energetic life. Noelle and Stefani know firsthand about the ups and downs of dieting. Like many people, they have struggled with confusing and frustrating health issues such as anxiety, infertility, and hormonal imbalance—but when they discovered that the secret to improving wellness was actually more food, they ditched the calorie counters and gave their bodies the nourishment they needed to heal. In the Coconuts and Kettlebells program, you’ll eat at least 2,000 calories a day—setting a minimum intake of fat, protein, and carbohydrates to ensure that your diet is full of nutrients. Noelle and Stefani identify the Big Four foods that cause the most health problems—grains, dairy, vegetable oils, and refined sugar. While many diets require you to eliminate these foods entirely, Coconuts and Kettlebells provides an easy-to-follow step-by-step system to test these foods and determine which you need to cut back on to feel better—and which you can eat without restrictions. To help you discover how your body responds to the Big Four, you’ll choose from two simple 4-week meal plans: one for Butter Lovers, people who tend to feel more satisfied eating higher ratios of fats, and one for Bread Lovers, people who tend to feel more satisfied eating higher ratios of carbs. Each meal plan comes with weekly shopping lists and instructions on how to batch cook, meal prep, and stock the pantry. In addition, you get more than 75 simple and delicious real food recipes, including: • Kale and Bacon Breakfast Skillet • Raspberry-Coconut Smoothie Bowl • Thai Coconut Curry Shrimp • Apple-Chicken Skillet • Moroccan Lamb Meatballs • Grilled Balsamic Flank Steak • Chocolate-Cherry Energy Bites • Lemon-Raspberry Mini Cheesecakes To go along with the meal plans, you’ll find three 4-week fitness plans tailored to beginner, intermediate, and advanced experience levels. Best of all, the workouts can be done anywhere—at your home or on the road—and take no more than 30 minutes each. A comprehensive whole-body program, Coconuts and Kettlebells provides the knowledge and tools you need to be healthy inside and out.