Showing results by narrator "Allyson Johnson" in All Categories

In the wake of 2020, we need today's young learners to be prepared to develop solutions to a host of entrenched and complex issues, including systemic racism, massive environmental problems, deep political divisions, and future pandemics that will severely test the effectiveness and equity of our health policies. What better place to start that preparation than with a social studies curriculum that enables elementary students to envision and build a better world?

Twelve science fiction stories about the oncoming future, each of them representing a possible glimpse of what could be just around the corner... or much further down the corridor. These stories previously appeared in places like Clarkesworld Magazine, The Year's Best SF, Subterranean Magazine, and in various anthologies. They deal with the future of war, our climate, and technology's effect on our lives.

A proud working-class woman, an "out" lesbian long before the Rainbow revolution, Joan Nestle has stood at the forefront of American freedom struggles from the McCarthy era to the present day. Featuring photographs and a new introduction by the author, this classic collection which intimately accounts the lesbian, feminist and civil rights movements through personal essays is available again for the first time in years.

In Black Utopias, Jayna Brown takes up the concept of utopia as a way of exploring alternative states of being, doing, and imagining in Black culture. Musical, literary, and mystic practices become utopian enclaves in which Black people engage in modes of creative worldmaking.

The word cowboy conjures up vivid images of rugged men on saddled horses - men lassoing cattle, riding bulls, or brandishing guns in a shoot-out. White men, as Hollywood remembers them. What is woefully missing from these scenes is their counterparts: the Black cowboys who made up one-fourth of the wranglers and rodeo riders. This book tells their story. 

New Yorker Jasmine Washington had a successful interior design business, a high-powered marriage, and a chance at motherhood - until her perfect husband betrayed her bigtime. Now starting from scratch, the Asian and African American stunner is tackling a lifetime opportunity: comanaging her friend's new luxury inn about to open in the Garden District. The last thing Jasmine needs is romance. New Orleans' most eligible bachelor, investment banker Cameron Singleton, begs to differ. 

The heartwarming story of a group of kids just looking to do the right thing who bring their community together along the way, from master storyteller Patricia Polacco, author of Thank You, Mr. Falker. This Kindness Edition features discussion questions at the back of the book to help guide...

Dr. Alice Cameron is a famous scientist - an archeoastronomer - devoted to studying ancient Mayan culture. The era driving her career has always been the end of the Mayan baktun, so she's on the Yucatan Peninsula in December 2012 with her daughter Nixie...and so are fellow serious scholars, plenty of end-of-the-world crazies, and - at an international summit - the President of the United States and other heads of state.

Something's happening in the small town of Bradbury. Something more sinister than the disappearance of the woman the Excoms have been sent to find. Something only they can stop. Ananke, Rosario, Dylan, Liesel, and Ricky have reassembled to undertake their second mission. Seems easy enough: locate the missing woman and be on their way. But not even the mysterious Administrator who called them together could have predicted what the team would encounter.

With her youthful appearance and light skin, African-American high school counselor Patricia knows how it feels to be an outsider in her own world. And when a biracial 15-year-old boy becomes the target of neighborhood bullies, she's determined to help him. One of New York's most successful men, Morgan Baxter feels totally at home in a corporate boardroom. But being a single father to a troubled teenager is a far more daunting challenge. Patricia Gilbert seems to understand his son - and him.

Beautiful young widow Elise Laffont embraces her freedom during the daylight hours, running the farm she loves so dearly, but the night brings with it painful reminders of the torment she endured at the hands of her abusive husband. Fate may have taken her husband, but it hasn't erased the scars he left, and Elise wonders if she will ever be able to bear the touch of a man again. From the moment he laid eyes on the beautiful widow, Reynaud Chevalier wanted her. When disaster offers him the chance to claim her as his own, Reynaud seizes the opportunity to bind Elise to him.

This debut science fiction novel is the story of Sira--a woman on the run from the law, from her own people, and from an unknown figure determined to use her for his own ends. Her memory taken from her by a stasis block, she must stay free long enough to regain both her identity and the full use of her telepathic powers. The price of failure may not only be the loss of her own future, but that of her entire race.

Self-exile became Sira's only choice when she discovered how deeply she'd been betrayed by the leaders of her own people. Rather than allow them to continue to use her for their own ruthless purposes, Sira, the most powerful being ever born to the alien race known at the Clan, fled with the human telepath, Jason Morgan. Now, living on a distant world in an environment over which she has control, Sira is striving to carve out a new life for herself.

Like all A-Z books, this one illustrates the alphabet - but instead of "A is for apple", A is for Angela - as in Angela Davis, the iconic political activist. B is for Billie Jean King, who shattered the glass ceiling of sports; C is for Carol Burnett, who defied assumptions about women in comedy; D is for Dolores Huerta, who organized farmworkers; and E is for Ella Baker, who mentored Dr. Martin Luther King and helped shape the civil rights movement.

The Exiled Leader: He was known as the Butcher of Jonasport. Zander Krycek made a choice that saved his world of Ithaca, but doomed his reputation and banished him to a planet far, far away. The Evil Empire: The Orlov Combine intends to swallow Ithaca in the same way they have devoured so many worlds, creating a "company planet" where the residents are litle beter than slaves.

A city equal parts darkness and hope. A scarred city. An often violent one. But a resilient city, too. That's our Memphis. Like many cities we have a namesake - in Egypt, Men-nefer became Menfe became Memphis, enduring and beautiful, on the banks of the Nile. Centuries later, another continent, another people, another river: Memphis, Tennessee, the soul of the Mississippi Delta, was formed.

When privateer Captain Catherine Blackwood is enlisted to rescue her brother from a treacherous warlord, she finds herself on her most dangerous mission yet. It's been years since Catherine Blackwood left the stodgy, repressive colony world of Avalon. Now the captain of the privateer vessel Andromeda, she is the master of her own destiny.

After she survives the bachelor auction, Sabine vows she is never doing another favor for a friend. This is especially true for favors that involve spending large sums of money and buying men whose last names she doesn't even know. In 20 bachelors, Sabine maybe expected to find several Davids, Mikes, or Johns. But what were the odds of two Todds? And now what is she going to do on a date with the wrong one?

Lorna Forrester was to wed the half-witted heir to the Beau Repose estate. But the day before her wedding, she met Ramon Cazenove, a daring blockade runner, thus beginning an incredible adventure into danger and love--from the Civil War-torn South to the windswept Caribbean.

This prequel to the Trade Pact Universe series begins in a time before the Clan had learned how to manipulate the M'hir to travel between worlds. Aliens have begun to explore the world of Cersi, upsetting the delicate balance between the Clan and the two other powerful races who coexist by set rules. And one young woman is on the verge of finding the forbidden secret of the M'hir - a discovery that could prove the salvation or ruin of her entire species.