Any Ordinary Day

Author: Leigh Sales
Publisher: Random House Australia
ISBN: 0143789961
Category : Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 271

Book Description
As a journalist, Leigh Sales often encounters people experiencing the worst moments of their lives in the full glare of the media. But one particular string of bad news stories--and a terrifying brush with her own mortality--sent her looking for answers about how vulnerable each of us is to a life-changing event. What are our chances of actually experiencing one? What do we fear most and why? And when the worst does happen, what comes next? In this wise and layered book, Leigh talks intimately with people who've faced the unimaginable, from terrorism to natural disaster to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Expecting broken lives, she instead finds strength, hope, even humor. Leigh brilliantly condenses the cutting-edge research on the way the human brain processes fear and grief, and poses the questions we too often ignore out of awkwardness. Along the way, she offers an unguarded account of her own challenges and what she's learned about coping with life's unexpected blows. Warm, candid, and empathetic, this book is about what happens when ordinary people, on ordinary days, are forced to suddenly find the resilience most of us don't know we have.

An Ordinary Day

Author: Elana K. Arnold
Publisher: Beach Lane Books
ISBN: 1481472623
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40

Book Description
An ordinary day in an ordinary neighborhood turns out to be quite extraordinary in this moving story about the circle of life. It’s an average day in the neighborhood—children play, roses are watered, and a crow watches over it all. But then two visitors arrive at two houses, one to help a family say hello to a new baby and one to help a family say goodbye to a beloved pet. This sensitive picture book takes a gentle look at life, death, the bonds of family, and the extraordinary moments that make ordinary days so special.

The Gift of an Ordinary Day

Author: Katrina Kenison
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
ISBN: 0446558095
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 209

Book Description
The Gift of an Ordinary Day is an intimate memoir of a family in transition, with boys becoming teenagers, careers ending and new ones opening up, and an attempt to find a deeper sense of place—and a slower pace—in a small New England town. This is a story of mid-life longings and discoveries, of lessons learned in the search for home and a new sense of purpose, and the bittersweet intensity of life with teenagers—holding on, letting go. Poised on the threshold between family life as she's always known it and her older son's departure for college, Kenison is surprised to find that the times she treasures most are the ordinary, unremarkable moments of everyday life, the very moments that she once took for granted, or rushed right through without noticing at all. The relationships, hopes, and dreams that Kenison illuminates will touch women's hearts, and her words will inspire mothers everywhere as they try to make peace with the inevitable changes in store.

No Ordinary Day

Author: Deborah Ellis
Publisher: Groundwood Books Ltd
ISBN: 155498176X
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 107

Book Description
Shortlisted for the SYRCA 2013 Diamond Willow Award, selected as an American Library Association 2012 Notable Children's Book, a Booklist Editors' Choice, nominated for the OLA Golden Oak Tree Award, and a finalist for the Ruth and Sylvia Schwartz Children's Book Awards: Young Adult/Middle Reader Award, the Governor General's Literary Awards: Children's Text and the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award There's not much that upsets young Valli. Even though her days are spent picking coal and fighting with her cousins, life in the coal town of Jharia, India, is the only life she knows. The only sight that fills her with terror are the monsters who live on the other side of the train tracks -- the lepers. Valli and the other children throw stones at them. No matter how hard her life is, she tells herself, at least she will never be one of them. Then she discovers that she is not living with family after all, that her "aunt" was a stranger who was paid money to take Valli off her own family's hands. She decides to leave Jharia ... and so begins a series of adventures that takes her to Kolkata, the city of the gods. It's not so bad. Valli finds that she really doesn't need much to live. She can "borrow" the things she needs and then pass them on to people who need them more than she does. It helps that though her bare feet become raw wounds as she makes her way around the city, she somehow feels no pain. But when she happens to meet a doctor on the ghats by the river, Valli learns that she has leprosy. Despite being given a chance to receive medical care, she cannot bear the thought that she is one of those monsters she has always feared, and she flees, to an uncertain life on the street. Correlates to the Common Core State Standards in English Language Arts: CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.4.3 Describe in depth a character, setting, or event in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., a character's thoughts, words, or actions). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.5.3 Compare and contrast two or more characters, settings, or events in a story or drama, drawing on specific details in the text (e.g., how characters interact). CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RL.6.6 Explain how an author develops the point of view of the narrator or speaker in a text.

Just an Ordinary Day

Author: Shirley Jackson
Publisher: Penguin UK
ISBN: 0241257956
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 496

Book Description
A remarkable collection of dark, funny and haunting short stories from the inimitable author of 'The Lottery'. An anxious devil, an elderly writer of poison pen letters and a mid-century Jack the Ripper; a pursuit though a nightmarish city, a small boy's thrilling train ride with a female thief, and a town where the possibility of evil lurks behind perfect rose bushes. This is the world of Shirley Jackson, by turns frightening, funny, strange and unforgettably revealed in this brilliant collection of short stories. 'Jackson at her best: plumbing the extraordinary from the depths of mid-twentieth-century common. [Just an Ordinary Day] is a gift to a new generation' - San Francisco Chronicle 'For Jackson devotees, as well as first-time readers, this is a feast ... A virtuoso collection' - Publishers Weekly

Just Another Ordinary Day

Author: Rod Clement
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
ISBN: 9780060276669
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 32

Book Description
Amanda's ordinary day has her riding to school with a Tyrannosaurus rex, talking after lunch with an alien, sailing a pirate ship at the school library, and riding home on an elephant.

An Ordinary Day

Author: Elana K. Arnold
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1481472631
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 40

Just an Ordinary Day

Author: Shirley Jackson
Publisher: Bantam
ISBN: 0307573591
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Book Description
“Jackson at her best: plumbing the extraordinary from the depths of mid-twentieth-century common. [Just an Ordinary Day] is a gift to a new generation.”—San Francisco Chronicle Acclaimed in her own time for her short story “The Lottery” and her novel The Haunting of Hill House—classics ranking with the work of Edgar Allan Poe—Shirley Jackson blazed a path for contemporary writers with her explorations of evil, madness, and cruelty. Soon after her untimely death in 1965, Jackson’s children discovered a treasure trove of previously unpublished and uncollected stories, many of which are brought together in this remarkable collection. Here are tales of torment, psychological aberration, and the macabre, as well as those that display her lighter touch with humorous scenes of domestic life. Reflecting the range and complexity of Jackson’s talent, Just an Ordinary Day reaffirms her enduring influence and celebrates her singular voice, rich with magic and resonance. Praise for Shirley Jackson “[Jackson’s] work exerts an enduring spell.”—Joyce Carol Oates “Shirley Jackson’s stories are among the most terrifying ever written.”—Donna Tartt “An amazing writer . . . If you haven’t read [Jackson] you have missed out on something marvelous.”—Neil Gaiman “Shirley Jackson is unparalleled as a leader in the field of beautifully written, quiet, cumulative shudders.”—Dorothy Parker “An author who not only writes beautifully but who knows what there is, in this world, to be scared of.”—Francine Prose “The world of Shirley Jackson is eerie and unforgettable.”—A. M. Homes “Jackson enjoyed notoriety and commercial success within her lifetime, and yet it still hardly seems like enough for a writer so singular. When I meet readers and other writers of my generation, I find that mentioning her is like uttering a holy name.”—Victor LaValle

No Ordinary Day

Author: Deborah Ellis
Publisher: Groundwood Books Ltd
ISBN: 1554981344
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 162

Book Description
After learning that her family adopted her, Valli runs away from home to live on the streets of Kolkata, India, where she begs, steals, and resists help from a doctor who reveals that she has leprosy.

Waiting for an Ordinary Day

Author: Farnaz Fassihi
Publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 0786726180
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

Book Description
Since 2003, Iraq's bloody legacy has been well-documented by journalists, historians, politicians, and others confounded by how Americans were seduced into the war. Yet almost no one has spoken at length to the constituency that represents Iraq's last best hope for a stable country: its ordinary working and middle class. Farnaz Fassihi, The Wall Street Journal's intrepid senior Middle East correspondent, bridges this gap by unveiling an Iraq that has remained largely hidden since the United States declared their "Mission Accomplished." Fassihi chronicles the experience of the disenfranchised as they come to terms with the realities of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In an unforgettable portrait of Iraqis whose voices have remained eerily silent -- from art gallery owners to clairvoyants, taxi drivers to radicalized teenagers -- Fassihi brings to life the very people whose goodwill the U.S. depended upon for a successful occupation. Haunting and lyrical, Waiting for An Ordinary Day tells the long-awaited story of post-occupation Iraq through native eyes.