Social scientist Brené Brown, PhD, LMSW, has sparked a global conversation about the experiences that bring meaning to our lives -- experiences of courage, vulnerability, love, belonging, shame, and empathy. Now Brown redefines what it means to truly belong in an age of increased polarization. Brown argues that we're experiencing a spiritual crisis of disconnection, and introduces four practices of true belonging that challenge everything we believe...

April is looking for an escape from the sixth-grade lunch hour, which has become a social-scene nightmare, so she signs up to be a "buddy bench monitor" for the fourth graders' recess. Joey Byrd is a boy on the fringes, who wanders the playground alone, dragging his foot through the dirt. But over time, April realizes that Joey isn't just making random circles. When you look at his designs from above, a story emerges... Joey's "bird's eye" drawings...

Even though he tries in turn to look more spoonish and then more forkish, the hybrid Spork never gets chosen at mealtimes until something arrives one day that doesn't care about cutlery customs.

Equality 7-2521 lives in the Dark Ages of the future, where all decisions are made by committee, all people live in collectives, all traces of individualism have been wiped out. But the spark of individual thought and freedom still burns in Equality 7-2521, a passion which he has been taught to call sinful. In a purely egalitarian world, he dares to stand forth from the herd -- to think and choose for himself, to discover electricity, and to love...

"From the New York Times bestselling author of A Man Called Ove, My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She's Sorry, and Britt-Marie Was Here, comes a poignant, charming novel about a forgotten town fractured by scandal, and the amateur hockey team that might just change everything."-- Provided by publisher. Winning a junior ice hockey championship means everything to the residents of Beartown, a struggling community slowly being eaten alive by unemployment...

Gerald the giraffe is too clumsy to dance with all the other animals at the Jungle Dance, until he finds the right music.

Mouse struggles to find the right way to express his anger, modeling the behavior of Hare, Bear, Hedgehog, and Bobcat, only to discover that his own way may be the best way of all.

Sweety is awkward, even for a naked mole rat, but with encouragement from her Aunt Ruth, she begins to see that being herself is the best way to find a friend.

Because he is too nice to be a pirate, Jack Plank looks for a new career, but each night he tells tales of why the one job he looked into that day is wrong.

In which Camilla tries to deny that she loves lima beans, and discovers that this falsehood causes her to break out in stripes, a condition which is eventually cured when she admits the truth, and enjoys her lima beans.