Alone and on the run from a secret organization that wants me dead, I know better than to hope for friendship. Survival is everything. But something about the boy I meet makes me long for more than simply surviving. Before I can understand my own desires, he's captured by the same organization that killed my parents. Somehow I'm in over my head trying to look after his younger siblings and somehow free him without getting caught myself. If I can survive this, will I ever get the chance at a stable life?

This easy-to-follow introduction to computer science reveals how familiar stories like Hansel and Gretel, Sherlock Holmes, and Harry Potter illustrate the concepts and everyday relevance of computing. Picture a computer scientist, staring at a screen and clicking away frantically on a keyboard, hacking into a system, or perhaps developing an app. Now delete that picture. In Once Upon an Algorithm, Martin Erwig explains computation as something that takes place beyond electronic computers, and computer science as the study of systematic problem solving. Erwig points out that many daily activities involve problem solving. Getting up in the morning, for example: You get up, take a shower, get dressed, eat breakfast. This simple daily routine solves a recurring problem through a series of well-defined steps. In computer science, such a routine is called an algorithm. Erwig illustrates a series of concepts in computing with examples from daily life and familiar stories. Hansel and Gretel, for example, execute an algorithm to get home from the forest. The movie Groundhog Day illustrates the problem of unsolvability; Sherlock Holmes manipulates data structures when solving a crime; the magic in Harry Potter’s world is understood through types and abstraction; and Indiana Jones demonstrates the complexity of searching. Along the way, Erwig also discusses representations and different ways to organize data; “intractable” problems; language, syntax, and ambiguity; control structures, loops, and the halting problem; different forms of recursion; and rules for finding errors in algorithms. This engaging book explains computation accessibly and shows its relevance to daily life. Something to think about next time we execute the algorithm of getting up in the morning.

The year is 1896 at Victoria on Vancouver Island in the newly formed colony of British Columbia. An animated, young Thadeus Matoe, a.k.a., Toadmatoe, comes to Professor Krokonals house seeking his wisdom about a mysterious gift he has just received from his friend Froglit Brar for his third-month birthday. Mystified, the Professor sends for the frog to question him. Toadmatoe returns with his friend, and just as the Professor is questioning him the police burst in and arrest Froglit Brar on suspicion of stealing a priceless heirloom. In their haste to haul him off to prison, the police fail to seize the alleged contraband. Convinced of Froglits innocence and with gift in hand, the Professor, Toadmatoe, and Ursula, his faithful Salamander, give chase. By a strange twist of fate, Froglit escapes his captors and is reunited with his friends. Now accomplices-at-large, the three fugitives meet some interesting characters who aid them on their way as they are providentially led through a series of mishaps and miraculous escapes from the pursuing long arm of the Victoria Constabulary. They leap-frog on traversing rapids and waterfalls, oer field and fen, as the gift choreographically draws them on, revealing keys to unlock its mystery. In the course of events the true villain is apprehended and the three friends reach the place where the gift finally reveals its secrets in a providentially synchronized moment in time.

In Once Upon a Time: My Life with Children's Books Sheila Egoff tells the story of her working life, from her early voracious reading, through all her significant contributions to libraries in Canada and to our national understanding of our own literature for children. She brings both a critical eye and a personal touch to this book, which reads as a memoir and as an account of important developments in Canadian writing and librarianship. In this time of cuts to budgets for books and for librarians, there is much here to reflect upon.

Set on the island of Crete, this multi-layered novel is of landscapes and lives shaped by an ancient ethos. When Michael, a Greek-American, visits his father's village, he comes to believe that his grandmother, the proud Efpraxsia, has poisoned a German man to avenge the murder of her father during the war. As Michael struggles to deal with his sense of betrayal, his mind spins within an age-old memory. And Polly, a tourist befriended by the family, is caught in the coils of this haunting past as she weaves a tangled web of her own making and ultimate demise.

THE AWARD-WINNING SERIES CONTINUES... Once Upon a Zombie, Book One: The Color of Fear, is the winner of numerous awards, including best YA Fiction (The Purple Dragonfly Award), Best Preteen novel (National Indie Excellence Awards), Best Juvenile Fiction (The President's Award), and featured on Kirkus's Best Books of the Year list. And now the much-anticipated sequel has arrived! Caitlin Fletcher is stunned when all the living dead characters from her last adventure in Wonderland vanished from her life. Had it all been a dream? A hallucination? Or did she suffer some kind of nervous breakdown because of the tragedy she was forced to confront? If only it was that simple... It turns out the truth is far more frightening! Everything Caitlin holds dear is threatened when the Lord of the Curtain, the mysterious enchanter from another universe, reaches into Caitlin's world, bringing darkness and death into her life. Her crippling fears, which she had finally gotten under control, now threaten to swallow her whole as her sanity is called into question, her family is in grave danger and a mutant flock of crowmen is sent to hunt her down and kill her. Walking dead Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, the Tin Man, and Scarecrow are just some of the blood-eyed zombies Caitlin must confront as she races against time to prevent her family from succumbing to a powerful force of unspeakable darkness. Provided the zombified mutant crowmen don't catch her first!

A New York Times Book ReviewEditors' Choice A teacher, a scholar, a philosopher, and an eyewitness to history, Sari Nusseibeh is one of our most urgent and articulate authorities on the conflict in the Middle East. From his time teaching side by side with Israelis at the Hebrew University through his appointment by Yasir Arafat to administer the Arab Jerusalem, he has held fast to the principles of freedom and equality for all, and his story dramatizes the consequences of war, partition, and terrorism as few other books have done. This autobiography brings rare depth and compassion to the story of his country.