"A collection of ten short stories that all take place in the same day about kids walking home from school"--

In Look Both Ways, respected branding consultant and design community leader Debbie Millman has constructed a series of essays that examine the close relationship between design and everyday life. You'll find inspiration on every page as you meander through illuminating observations that are both personal and universal. Each beautifully illustrated essay reveals the magic - and wonder - of the often unseen world around us. Excerpt from "Look Both Ways" It occurred to me, as I stood there, that I could simultaneously, vividly look both ways - backward and forward, in time - at once. I remembered longing to know what was coming, who I would become and how. And I suddenly saw it all over again in front of me. The light was exactly the same, and as the sun fell and the summer shadows slivered against the elegant, lean, concrete towers in the distance, I recognized the smell of the warm air, the precise pink and grey of the coming dusk and the mysterious melancholy and joy of both knowing and not-knowing, and the continuity that occurs when both collide.—Debbie Millman

"When two brothers decide to prove how brave they are, everything backfires--literally"--

Aspiring to be the fastest sprinter on his elite middle school's track team, gifted runner Ghost finds his goal challenged by a tragic past with a violent father.

With humor and sensitivity, a debut novelist explores the coming of age of a girl caught between two cultures as she finds the courage to forge a new destiny. "Miss, will you be my Amiga?" Amiga means "friend" in Spanish, but at the youth center, it meant a lady to take you places. I never asked myself if two people as different as Miss and me could ever really be amigas. When Jacinta Juarez is paired with a rich, famous mentor, she is swept away from the diapers and dishes of her own daily life into a world of new experiences. But crossing la linea into Miss's world is scary. Half of Jacinta aches for the comfort of Mamá and the familiar safety of the barrio, while the other half longs to embrace a future that offers more than cleaning stuff for white people. When her family is torn apart, Jacinta needs to bring the two halves of herself together to win back everything she's lost. Can she channel the power she's gained from her mentor and the strength she's inherited from Mamá to save her shattered home life?

Written nearly two decades since Ellison's film-adapted book, Miracles Happen: One Mother, One Daughter, One Journey, LOOK BOTH WAYS offers a more mature, more contemplative look at life after the accident that left her paralyzed from the neck down at age eleven. Using personal and, at times, emotionally challenging events in her life as a platform, Ellison compels readers to reflect upon experiences in their own lives and thrive as a result of them. Exploring topics such as identity, ethics, inclusion, hope, and love as part autobiography and part sociological analysis, Ellison imparts universal truths fueled by the unrelenting spirit of one who refuses to be defined by a single event in her life, but rather chooses to be defined by all of them.

For author and activist Baumgardner, bisexuality has always been more than the "sexual non-preference of the '90s." Here she takes a close look at gay and bisexual people on the national cultural stage and the issues their growing visibility raises. In a society supposedly grown more open and accepting, what can it mean that bisexuality continues to be marginalized by both gay and straight cultures, and dismissed either as a phase or, worse, a cop-out? Baumgardner discusses her own experience as a bisexual, and the struggle she's undergone to reconcile the privilege of a woman who is perceived as straight, and the empowerment and satisfaction she's derived from her relationships with women. Her book is a study in bisexual lives lived secretly and openly, and an exploration of the lessons learned by writers, artists, and activists who have refused the either/or paradigm defended by both gay and straight communities.--From publisher description.