The developing brains of our children need to feel safe.

Children who carry chronic behavioral challenges are often met with
reactive and punitive practices that can potentially reactivate the developing stress response systems.

This book deeply addresses the need for co-regulatory and relational touch point practices, shifting student-focused behavior management protocols to adult regulated brain and body states which are brain aligned, preventive, and relational discipline protocols. This new lens for discipline benefits all students by reaching for sustainable behavioral changes through brain state awareness rather than compliance and obedience.

Sybil Ludington believes in the legend of fireflies - they appear when you need them most. But it's not until her family is thrust into the dangers of the Revolutionary War, and into George Washington's spy ring, that Sybil experiences firefly magic for herself - guiding her through the darkness, empowering her to figure out who she's supposed to be and how strong she really is - as she delivers her imperative message. BY THE LIGHT OF FIREFLIES is the captivating tale of a young girl's journey - as a daughter, a sister, a friend, a spy, and eventually a war hero - completing a midnight ride that cements her place in history as the female Paul Revere.

This book is an absolute must-read for educators.

Educator fatigue and burnout are at an all-time high. Students are carrying their mental and emotional exhaustion into the classroom.

Intentional Neuroplasticity explores the plasticity of the brain and nervous system, while learning how adversity and trauma impact a student's developing nervous system to affect behaviors--which ultimately changes the way educators approach discipline and engagement.

Neuroplasticity is more than the latest and greatest buzzword-when educational practitioners are informed and encouraged to share this dynamic, miraculous superpower of human potentiality, both teachers and children understand why they feel the way they do, and how feelings and thoughts impact their mood, motivation, and engagement. When we empower and relieve our nervous systems with the language of science and deepened understanding of why we sense, feel, and behave the ways we do, we are preparing for a lifetime of possibility through the knowledge of brain and body architecture and plasticity.

With the growing body of research in relational and affective neuroscience, our schools can benefit and serve the whole student as we prioritize the nervous system by addressing the embodied experiences, generational and historical trauma, and the stories they hold.

Lori Desautels is a teacher, not a neuroscientist-she knows that the translations and applications from the affective, developmental, social, and relational neuroscience research are critical to educational practitioners now more than ever. No one could have been prepared for the emotional and social losses, challenging behaviors, and dysregulation that are impacting the well-being of our students during the past few years-our collective nervous systems feel the tension and unrest. Intentional Neuroplasticity: Moving Our Nervous Systems and Educational System Toward Post-Traumatic Growth can provide educators cutting-edge information, practices, tools, and exercises to regulate and empower themselves and their students for resiliency and success!

KIRKUS REVIEWS writes: A manual for empathic and trauma-informed teaching. In her latest book, Desautels, an assistant professor in Indiana-based Butler University's College of Education, builds on her work in Connections Over Compliance (2020) to offer a framework to create an effective learning environment for students while also optimizing teachers' mental health. Drawing on applied educational neuroscience and polyvagal theory (which foregrounds the role of the vagus nerve on emotions and reactions to trauma), Desautels explains how to approach and maintain emotional regulation, help students achieve stability, and create a supportive environment that allows space for learning.

The book encourages teachers to coregulate with students, modeling such behaviors as deep breathing, taking breaks, and mindfulness, while also understanding that the methods they find most useful may not be the ones their students prefer. Desautels addresses the specific problems that the Covid-19 pandemic has brought to the learning experience but reminds readers that there's always been a need for welcoming approaches to teaching.

The book includes several 'Guest Reflections' by other teachers, which offer additional perspectives on trauma-informed teaching and provide concrete examples of implementing this book's highlighted techniques. Desautels acknowledges that her methods may require a fundamental shift in classroom management, but she persuasively presents the work as worthwhile.

The eyes of troubled youth are communicating in all moments.

Hurt people hurt people. Our children can become violent, detached, or shut down when early development is toxic, severely disrupted and is met with significant adverse childhood experiences. Children are our nation's greatest natural resource and their emotional, mental and physiological well-being are at stake.

What can we do? We begin with the awareness and research that adversity just doesn't happen to a child - it attacks and hijacks a child's brain, body and nervous system function reprograming how they react and respond to all life. For educators, counselors, social workers, mental health professionals and law enforcement - this book presents the neurobiology of adversity and trauma in youth and the resiliency of hope and mindfulness, and how to help.

An illustrated meditative journey of the nervous system experience through the lens of The Polyvagal Theory--the reader moves through the different nervous system states and the 'felt' experience of dysregulation. The author shares co-regulation techniques to empower and furnish the reader with the self-help tools to shift nervous system states. Its meditative structure aims to reduce anxiety, depression, and traumatic stress, while creating mental wellness and emotional security.

From the Afterword written by Stephen W. Porges, PhD, creator of The Polyvagal Theory: The Tree & Me elegantly captures the essence of Polyvagal Theory by highlighting the importance of connection, safety, and nurturing experiences in achieving a state of well-being and wholeness. The poem serves as a beautiful reminder of the profound impact of our relationships and environment on our mental and physical health.

From Kirkus Reviews: This rhyming poem was inspired by psychologist and neuroscientist Stephen Porges' polyvagal theory, which dealt in part with the vagus nerve's role in trauma response. Dickson uses a tree metaphor to describe the impact of trauma on the human nervous system. The book accurately depicts aspects of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms ... the illustrations effectively contribute to the book's soothing aesthetic.

Sybil Ludington believes in the legend of fireflies - they appear when you need them most. But it's not until her family is thrust into the dangers of the Revolutionary War, and into George Washington's spy ring, that Sybil experiences firefly magic for herself - guiding her through the darkness, empowering her to figure out who she's supposed to be and how strong she really is - as she delivers her imperative message. BY THE LIGHT OF FIREFLIES is the captivating tale of a young girl's journey - as a daughter, a sister, a friend, a spy, and eventually a war hero - completing a midnight ride that cements her place in history as the female Paul Revere.

When their Ukrainian grandmother is lost on a trans-Atlantic Flight, two sisters are swept into a quest across eastern Europe to find the woman who had always told more tales than truths.

From Poland to Slovakia to Hungary and beyond, Larissa and Ira navigate the steps of Ukrainian folk dance, the cliff-side paths of Slovak Paradise National Park, and the stark realities of war, folktales, and feminism, all for the sake of chasing who they're starting to believe is a true Baba Yaga. Understanding their family's roots has never been more clear.

The setting's mythic properties drift like ghosts in the humid air, hinting of the folktales the sisters whisper like codes of bravery. The nesting dolls they discover reveal how each woman becomes stronger when tucked one, within another, within another-forgetting lies and truths to seize upon history, love, and the familial traditions that have shaped them into who they are together.

Author and professional editor Kris Spisak has been spotlighted in Writer's Digest and The Huffington Post for her work to helping other writers. Her previous non-fiction books include Get a Grip on Your Grammar: 250 Writing and Editing Reminders for the Curious or Confused, The Novel Editing Workbook, and The Family Story Workbook. Spisak's background and her own family experience in the Ukrainian diaspora add weight to her fiction debut.

Geology professor Kate Brandes' story of a woman abandoned by her father, an anarchist who blows up dams, presents complex environmental issues further complicated by thorny family dynamics.

Seventeen years ago, Tilly Stone (age 13) is left to fend for herself in rural Pennsylvania when her infamous eco-terrorist father disappears under mysterious circumstances. Ever since she's tried to forget the dams they blew up together and forge a new life until her father's return threatens to upend her small-town world and her friendship with the dogged FBI agent still pursuing him. Ultimately, as the past and present fuse and blow up with more than one kind of casualty, Tilly must choose between the father she loves and her home.

FAIRYTALE is the first and only book to provide inside portraits of The Pointer Sisters' formative and professional life--June, Bonnie, Anita and Ruth come of age as mold-breaking artists during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s. See how paths chosen and challenges faced--individually and collectively--strengthened and honed their forty-eight year musical career.

This is a story of love and rivalry between sisters--for lead vocals, and for men. It is also an intimate story of family love--of a sagacious, strong and caring father, and a mother's love.

In recorded and transcribed interviews over several years, and family heirloom photographs and private personal letters, Anita and Fritz Pointer (sister and brother) bring to life the exciting story of: migration during the 1940s Great Migration of Black Americans; fifteen family members living in one house; the deeply troubling dismissal of their father from the church he helped to build; Bonnie and Anita's founding membership in the Northern California Black Panther Party; the Sisters serendipitous discovery.

Fritz Pointer, one of the older brothers of June, Bonnie, Anita and Ruth, brings insight, veracity and passion to this story. No one else knows the family, community, political or social history out of which The Pointer Sisters came as thoroughly and deeply as he does. Fritz has a BA in English, Creighton University, 1966; MA, African Studies, UCLA, 1971; MA, African Languages and Literature, U. Wisconsin, Madison, 1979. He has thirty years experience teaching Composition, African and African American Humanities, and History in higher education. Fritz has authored two books and several scholarly articles in his area of African Literature.

Anita Pointer shares a passion with Fritz for telling the story of The Pointer Sisters--which has been their unshakeable commitment for nearly a decade. In FAIRYTALE, Anita takes us inside the relationship of the sisters, in one of America's most dynamic families, making contributions as: professional athletes, a college professor and world-renown entertainers singing, writing, and recording skillfully, passionately, beautifully across genres--Jazz (scat, bebop), Blues, Rock and Roll, Country & Western, Rhythm & Blues--uniquely unequaled and unparalleled in music history.

Camille Di Maio's fifth novel THE FIRST EMMA is the true story of Emma Koehler, whose tycoon husband Otto was killed in a crime-of-the-century murder by one of his two mistresses--both also named Emma--and her unlikely rise as CEO of a brewing empire during Prohibition. When a chance to tell her story to a young teetotaler arises, a tale unfolds of love, war, beer, and the power of women.

A majority of Americans feel that teachers are paid too little and are underappreciated. Despite this, out of almost 500 professions analyzed to see what the most meaningful jobs in America are, three of the top twelve are in education

In The Wealthy Teacher, learn from fellow educator Danny Kofke how you can:
- Raise a family of four on a teacher's salary
- Develop and stick to a budget for good
- Build up an emergency fund
- Pay off all of your debt
- Save over $30,000 this year (in an added bonus ebook)
- Become a wealthy teacher, too

The Wealthy Teacher is the perfect blueprint for financial success no matter what your salary. Danny Kofke's advice is spot on whether you want to save more money, reduce debt or better plan for retirement.
Lynnette Khalfani-Cox, The Money Coach, author of the New York Times bestseller Zero Debt

An illustrated meditative journey of the nervous system experience through the lens of The Polyvagal Theory--the reader moves through the different nervous system states and the 'felt' experience of dysregulation. The author shares co-regulation techniques to empower and furnish the reader with the self-help tools to shift nervous system states. Its meditative structure aims to reduce anxiety, depression, and traumatic stress, while creating mental wellness and emotional security.

From the Afterword written by Stephen W. Porges, PhD, creator of The Polyvagal Theory: The Tree & Me elegantly captures the essence of Polyvagal Theory by highlighting the importance of connection, safety, and nurturing experiences in achieving a state of well-being and wholeness. The poem serves as a beautiful reminder of the profound impact of our relationships and environment on our mental and physical health.

From Kirkus Reviews: This rhyming poem was inspired by psychologist and neuroscientist Stephen Porges' polyvagal theory, which dealt in part with the vagus nerve's role in trauma response. Dickson uses a tree metaphor to describe the impact of trauma on the human nervous system. The book accurately depicts aspects of post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms ... the illustrations effectively contribute to the book's soothing aesthetic.

The third book in THE RIVERSEDGE LAW CLUB SERIES from lawyer-turned-novelist Amy Impellizzeri.

In EASY STREET, an old industrial building in Riversedge, New York, is purchased on the cheap by a co-op of lawyer friends who want to convert the building into high end condos. While the co-op's members want to believe they have used their combined stellar negotiating skills to secure the building's price, mounting evidence of building flaws, code violations and environmental pollutants begin to convince them otherwise. Facing bankruptcy and ruin, the group conspires to hide the building's issues for as long as possible, until tragedy strikes, turning the group on each other in a trial that reveals much more than mold and cracked foundations. Suddenly, the group's secrets are on trial, and it turns out they were hiding something much bigger than the money pit on Easy Street.

ANTONIO, WE KNOW YOU follows the life of a migrant farmworker kidnapped at age four, trafficked through age ten at a famous California Ranch, until being saved from an attempted suicide and taken under Cesar Chavez's wing. Antonio eventually graduated from law school and found the strength and resilience to be reunited with his long-lost family after 24 years. In telling his story, Antonio aims to offer hope in desperate circumstances. He shares the legacy of his family and reflects the dignity and sacrifices of their difficult Chicano life.

Run, Holly, Run is the funny, but harrowing true story of former child actress Kathy Coleman--who starred in the hit 1970s show Land of the Lost. Kathy grew up fatherless in Southern California in the 1960s as the last child in a family of ten children. Her bright smile and blonde curls got her into television commercials at a very young age, and by the time she was 10 she was touring the country and recording as the youngest member of a popular musical group.

Kathy played the role of Holly on the 1974-1977 NBC Saturday morning series produced by H.R. Pufnstuf creators Sid and Marty Krofft, featuring state-of-the-art special effects and written by some of the biggest names in literary science fiction. Land of the Lost was known for its intelligent scripts and original concepts--from an alternate universe inhabited by dinosaurs, to primate-like Pakuni and lizard creature Sleestaks to dimension-hopping Pylons. It became the most successful Saturday morning program of the decade. When it finished its network run, the show went directly into syndicated reruns that continue to this day. It is this show for which Kathy is most remembered. The book's title--Run, Holly, Run --is taken from the oft-repeated instructions of her TV brother, Will, played by Wesley Eure.

Run, Holly, Run details the making of Land of the Lost and how the series gave Kathy fame, fun, lifelong friendships, and a positive father figure, while also leading to a few heartaches, troubles, and trauma.

Learn what happened after the series ended

People today live in psychological bubbles. They think that they are the only ones who experience what they do.

Person after highly intelligent person comes into therapy thinking that there is something terribly wrong with them. They think that they are crazy, yet do not realize that everyone around them is having quite similar experiences.

YOU ARE NOT CRAZY: Letters from Your Therapist ends the psychological isolation. It helps people realize that they are not the only ones who have strange thoughts or behave inconsistently.
Psychotherapist David Klow brings deep insight, wisdom, and warmth to this process as he helps readers find new understanding about themselves. Through a series of heartfelt letters to his patients, he relates timeless and impactful information that normalizes life's struggles.

YOU ARE NOT CRAZY . . .

- Is for those looking to develop insight into themselves

- For anyone who wants to have more satisfying relationships

- For readers who want to eavesdrop on the inner lives of others while perhaps seeing themselves through their struggles

- Uses letters as vehicles for transmitting valuable information and for normalizing the process of therapy

- While confrontational on occasion, the compassion and love from the therapist shine through every time

2020 IPPY GOLD AWARD WINNER Memoir

A not-so-nice Jewish girl, expelled from Yale Drama during the Vietnam protests, abandons her acting dream to follow the man she loves to an off-the-grid commune in Oregon.

At 23, Carol Schlanger was an insecure upper middle class radical. Her parents spoiled her and she expected the universe to follow. It didn't. After being expelled from Yale, losing a coveted Broadway lead, and seeing a suicide splatter at her feet, she left NYC for the Great Northwest, to live in nature with a man who made everything beautiful with his hands. At that time she chose love and nature, over art and career ... until she didn't. Carol Schlanger put hidden cash down on an abandoned homestead--160 acres. The commune followed--all 13 jammed tight into a broken-down cabin with no phone, no electricity, and no running water. They were dependent on each other for every human need and survival. But then freeloading and free love threatened the hard-won utopia. After struggling through infidelity, rape, and childbirth, all except the father of her child left when Carol refused to share land ownership. When, as a lone wilderness wife, she accidentally set their house on fire, she realized she couldn't survive in isolation. Strapping her toddler into a battered old Chevy, she headed to Los Angeles to reclaim her life as a mother, her power as an artist, and her responsibility as an adult. This time her Texan followed her. This is both their love story, and a love story for an explosive, mind-altering era.

The developing brains of our children need to feel safe.

Children who carry chronic behavioral challenges are often met with reactive and punitive practices that can potentially reactivate the developing stress response systems. This book deeply addresses the need for co-regulatory and relational touch point practices, shifting student-focused behavior management protocols to adult regulated brain and body states which are brain aligned, preventive, and relational discipline protocols. This new lens for discipline benefits all students by reaching for sustainable behavioral changes through brain state awareness rather than compliance and obedience.

FAIRYTALE is the first and only book to provide inside portraits of The Pointer Sisters' formative and professional life--June, Bonnie, Anita and Ruth come of age as mold-breaking artists during the Civil Rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s. See how paths chosen and challenges faced--individually and collectively--strengthened and honed their forty-eight year musical career.

This is a story of love and rivalry between sisters--for lead vocals, and for men. It is also an intimate story of family love--of a sagacious, strong and caring father, and a mother's love.

In recorded and transcribed interviews over several years, and family heirloom photographs and private personal letters, Anita and Fritz Pointer (sister and brother) bring to life the exciting story of: migration during the 1940s Great Migration of Black Americans; fifteen family members living in one house; the deeply troubling dismissal of their father from the church he helped to build; Bonnie and Anita's founding membership in the Northern California Black Panther Party; the Sisters serendipitous discovery.

Fritz Pointer, one of the older brothers of June, Bonnie, Anita and Ruth, brings insight, veracity and passion to this story. No one else knows the family, community, political or social history out of which The Pointer Sisters came as thoroughly and deeply as he does. Fritz has a BA in English, Creighton University, 1966; MA, African Studies, UCLA, 1971; MA, African Languages and Literature, U. Wisconsin, Madison, 1979. He has thirty years experience teaching Composition, African and African American Humanities, and History in higher education. Fritz has authored two books and several scholarly articles in his area of African Literature.

Anita Pointer shares a passion with Fritz for telling the story of The Pointer Sisters--which has been their unshakeable commitment for nearly a decade. In FAIRYTALE, Anita takes us inside the relationship of the sisters, in one of America's most dynamic families, making contributions as: professional athletes, a college professor and world-renown entertainers singing, writing, and recording skillfully, passionately, beautifully across genres--Jazz (scat, bebop), Blues, Rock and Roll, Country & Western, Rhythm & Blues--uniquely unequaled and unparalleled in music history.