According to Mencap, there are approximately 351,000 children in the UK with a learning disability. In the US, 17 percent of children have delays in physical, learning, language, or behavior development. It doesn’t stop there. Worldwide, there are around 18.5 million people with speech, voice, or language disorders! If you yourself don’t have or never have had a speech and language delay or disorder, it’s nearly impossible to understand what your little one is going through.

Abandoned by her mother at age seven, Alexandra Winslow takes solace in the mysteries she reads with her devoted father - and soon she is writing them herself, slowly graduating to dark, complex crime stories that reflect skill, imagination, and talent far beyond her years. After her father's untimely death, at 14 Alex is taken in by the nuns of a local convent, where she finds 26 mothers to take the place of the one she lost, and the time and encouragement to pursue her gift.

The stories we read--and the conversations we have about them--help shape family traditions, create lifelong memories, and become part of our legacy. Reading aloud not only has the power to change a family—it has the power to change the world. But we all know that connecting deeply with our families can be difficult in our busy, technology-driven society. Reading aloud is one of the best ways to be fully present with our children, even after they can read themselves, but it isn't always easy to do.

>"What are you reading?" That's the question Will Schwalbe asks his mother, Mary Anne, as they sit in the waiting room of the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. In 2007, Mary Anne returned from a humanitarian trip to Pakistan and Afghanistan suffering from what her doctors believed was a rare type of hepatitis. Months later she was diagnosed with a form of advanced pancreatic cancer, which is almost always fatal, often in six months or less. This is the inspiring true story of a son and his mother.

Do you want to write stories that catch your readers and never let go? Have you ever wondered how to create a book as magical as Ella Enchanted, as touching as Dave at Night, as captivating as Fairest? Well, now you can find out! In Writing Magic, Newbery Honor author Gail Carson Levine shares her secrets of great writing. She shows how you, too, can get terrific ideas for stories, invent great beginnings and endings, write sparkling dialogue, develop memorable characters - and much, much more.

In this WMG Writer's Guide, international best-selling author Kristine Kathryn Rusch discusses the destructive ways peer workshops and the quest for perfection derail many writers' careers. Listening to critics and academics - amateur and professional - often strips out the joy of writing. And a failure to recognize writing as a business furthers the potential damage. But Rusch offers hope for writers who have suffered at the hands of critique - external and internal - and outlines a path to healing.

Have you always wanted to learn how to speak Hebrew but simply didn't have the time? Well if so, then, look no further. Here is one of the most advanced and revolutionary methods that was ever designed for quickly becoming conversational in a language. In creating this time-saving program, master linguist Yatir Nitzany spent years examining the 27 most common languages in the world and distilling from them the 350 words that are most likely to be used in real conversations.

The Stephen King Companion is an authoritative look at horror author King's personal life and professional career, from Carrie to The Bazaar of Bad Dreams. King expert George Beahm, who has published extensively about Maine's main author, is your seasoned guide to the imaginative world of Stephen King, covering his varied and prodigious output: juvenalia, short fiction, limited edition books, best-selling novels, and film adaptations.

Writing fast is the most important skill you can develop as a writer. While it seems hard to hit high word counts, the secrets are easier than you think. In this writer's guide, prolific author M. L. Ronn pulls back the curtain on the process that he uses to write six to eight novels a year. He has kept this pace while juggling responsibilities as a husband, father, manager at a Fortune 100 company, and a law school student. The result is a catalog of over 40 books and counting.

Terry Pratchett has earned a place in the hearts of listeners the world over with his best-selling Discworld series - but in recent years he has become equally well-known and respected as an outspoken campaigner for causes including Alzheimer's research and animal rights. A Slip of the Keyboard brings together for the first time the finest examples of Pratchett's nonfiction writing, both serious and surreal: from musings on mushrooms to what it means to be a writer (and why banana daiquiris are so important).

Have you thought about writing a book? Do you just not know where to begin? Do you get writer's block just thinking about writing a book? Best-selling nonfiction author David Kadavy shares his simple process for writing a book. Build confidence, ditch your inner critic, and finally write your book with simple habits you can start today. You can listen to this short read in under an hour, so it won't get in the way of the one thing standing between you and your book: action!

So you want to narrate. Great,. Let me be the first to congratulate you. It's about time. If you've been thinking about this for a long time, I don't know what took you so long. This is not as hard as people say. This is not a get-rich-quick scheme, and it does require some work on your part. I want to show you how you can begin to be a great narrator, make a lot of sales, supplement your income, and live a life with residual income forever.

Struggling to finish your novels? Learn how to tweak your workflow process and write one in only five days! After taking way too long to write a fantasy epic, author and educator Scott King refined his writing process so that he could crank out a novel in five days! Through easy-to-follow tips and helpful examples, Scott takes a theme and shapes an entire story around it. Let him walk you through the prewriting process, slogging through a first draft, and doing the rewrites.

If your desire is to learn complicated grammatical rules or to speak perfectly proper and precise Arabic, this book is not for you. However, if you need to actually hold a conversation while on a trip to Lebanon, to impress that certain someone, or to be able to speak with your grandfather or grandmother as soon as possible, then the Nitzany Method is what you have been looking for.

Pamela Paul has kept a single book by her side for 28 years - carried throughout high school and college, hauled from Paris to London to Thailand, from job to job, safely packed away and then carefully removed from apartment to house to its current perch on a shelf over her desk - reliable if frayed, anonymous-looking yet deeply personal. This book has a name: Bob. Bob is Paul's Book of Books, a journal that records every book she's ever read.