" "I don't agree with all the choices people make," says the author. "You probably won't either. My job is to let them tell their stories." And so she does in these thirteen warm, funny, and sad short stories about people making hard decisions for themselves and for their families: - Like Iona, who accidentally accepts a marriage proposal - And Daryll, just about to graduate from high school, whose mother is eager for him to "make something" of himself. - And Lexie and Jeb, deep in debt and already struggling to feed their six children, who find out a seventh is on the way.

" Golden Kite Award winner, 1989 Booklist, Editor's Choice School Library Journal, Best Books of 1988 Publisher's Weekly, Best Books of 1988 Twelve-year-old Amanda Perritt is pitched head-first into adult responsibilities when she has to quit school to care for her newborn brother and invalid mother. She gets an excape, she thinks, when she's offered a trip to stay with her grandmother and her sophisticated Aunt Laura in Memphis. But during the visit, she discovers unexpected parallels between her mother's childhood and her own and comes to understand her own individuality as well as what...

" The stories in Bobbie Ann Mason's remarkable collection read like poetic transcriptions of day-to-day life. With her keen eye and ear for late twentieth-century popular culture, Mason can render a photograph of a brightly lit supermarket or a bit of wisdom from the Donahue show. This special edition of a beloved local author's work includes a new foreword by George Ella Lyon, Kentucky writer and friend of the author.

With a Hammer for My Heart is the story of Lawanda, a precocious, poverty-stricken fifteen-year-old girl from Cardin, Kentucky, who dreams of attending college. When Lawanda's friendship with an alcoholic World War II veteran named Garland is misinterpreted by their fellow townspeople, a tragedy calls her future into question.

Trucks bring blocks,

books and bulldozers,

dolls and socks."

Through mountains and flatlands, past deserts and towns, the trucks are rolling With its rhyming text and bold illustrations, Trucks Roll invites kids along on a day in a trucker's life and shows that many things we enjoy depend on the trucker's work.

from each of these
comes water.

But where does
Water go?

To find out, honey,
turn the page,
dive in
with tongue
or toes,
with eyes and ears and nose--
and wonder
at the flow
of this great world's
life story.

From George Ella Lyon comes a dynamic and humorous collection examining the transformations of one woman's life as she tries on, takes on, and peels off identities learned from family stories, gender, fairy tales, and myths. She Let Herself Go spirals through girlhood, wifehood, motherhood, and writerhood, through the poet's evolution, casting a discerning -- and often irreverent -- eye on the cultural expectations that have shaped her. Claiming Virginia Woolf as word-mother, these poems converse with powerful feminist poets, including Muriel Rukeyser, Ruth Stone, and Grace...

"Table of Contents A celebration of holiday poetry, fiction, essays, recipes, and songs by more than sixty of the Bluegrass state's finest writers. Gathered here are writings from some of the legendary voices of Kentucky -- and the nation -- as well as original Christmas stories and poetry from some of the state's emerging talents. Among the contributors to this handsome collection are Kentucky's visionaries, storytellers, historians, singers, cooks, children's authors, and poets, including all five Kentucky Poet Laureates. A delight for anyone interested in Kentucky literature, history,...

Appalachia is no stranger to loss. The region suffers regular ecological devastation wrought by strip mining, fracking, and deforestation as well as personal tragedy brought on by enduring poverty and drug addiction. In Driving with the Dead, Appalachian poet, teacher, and artist Jane Hicks weaves an earnest and impassioned elegy for an imperiled yet doggedly optimistic people and place. Exploring the roles that war, environment, culture, and violence play in Appalachian society, the hard-hitting collection is visceral and unflinchingly honest, mourning a land and people devastated...