A life-changing book that uses new research to challenge old beliefs about belonging.

"Fourteen-year-old Linda lives with her parents in the beautiful, austere woods of northern Minnesota, where their nearly abandoned commune stands as a last vestige of a lost counter-culture world. Isolated at home and an outlander at school, Linda is drawn to the enigmatic,attractive Lily and new history teacher Mr. Grierson. When Mr. Grierson is charged with possessing child pornography, the implications of his arrest deeply affect Linda as she...

"Barb Matheson doesn't fit in: not on the Standing Rock Reservation where her mother was born; not at the mission in rural Ethiopia where she grew up; and certainly not at the Pennsylvania church where her husband preaches. Expansive and lyrical, Unfollowers is a tale of religious angst, unrequited love, and the upheaval of racial and economic privilege. Equally adrift on both sides of the Atlantic, Barb must negotiate the distance between white America...

Human beings have succeeded as the most dominant species on earth in large part due to our need to connect and cooperate. It was our ability to socialize and connect that catapulted our species to phenomenal heights of innovation, through collaboration and specialization. This drive has fine-tuned our unconscious perception of faces, facial expressions, body language, and touch. Our primitive drive to connect changes how we perceive the world and...

Kinship spans the cosmos, but it is perhaps most life changing when experienced directly and personally. "Persons," Volume 4 of the Kinship series, attends to the personal-our unique experiences with particular creatures and landscapes. This includes nonhuman kin that become our allies, familiars, and teachers as we navigate a "world as full of persons, human and otherwise, all more-or-less close kin, all deserving respect," as religious studies scholar...

As four very different letters arrive at the playground, each makes the next feel unwelcome, but once they begin to swing together, they have a wonderful time.

"On Belonging is an exploration of the crisis of social isolation and of the fundamental human need to belong. It considers belonging across four core dimensions: in our relationships with other people, in our rootedness in nature, in our ability to influence political and economic decision-making, and in our finding of meaning and purpose in our lives, with lessons on how to create communities centered on human connection"--

The story of Serena and Dan Shine, estranged from one another as they separately grieve over the recent loss of Serena's father and Dan's older brother. Serena's actions cause the couple and their two small children to be banished from New York City, and they settle in the only town that will offer Dan employment: Waring, North Carolina. There, in the Bible belt of America, Serena becomes enmeshed with the small Jewish congregation in town led by...

Grace Carpenter never feels like she 'fits' in her large extended black family because of her fair skin and red hair. But, then she learns about her birth mother and starts to piece together the mystery of her identity.

"Upbeat rhyming verse and colorful illustrations of a diverse group of students invite readers to "be a bridge" by taking actions that foster inclusivity, respect, and connection"--