5 favorite kid authors, 5 inspiring books for adults

If your kids haven't gotten hooked on the Percy Jackson series yet, now's the time! The movie will be out soon and it's sure to be a hit. This is a fantastic fantasy-adventure series.
Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school...again. And that’s the least of his troubles. Lately, mythological monsters and the gods of Mount Olympus seem to be walking straight out of the pages of Percy’s Greek mythology textbook and into his life. And worse, he’s angered a few of them. Zeus’s master lightning bolt has been stolen, and Percy is the prime suspect. Now Percy and his friends have just ten days to find and return Zeus’s stolen property and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus. But to succeed on his quest, Percy will have to do more than catch the true thief: he must come to terms with the father who abandoned him; solve the riddle of the Oracle, which warns him of betrayal by a friend; and unravel a treachery more powerful than the gods themselves. With cover art from the major motion picture, this first installment of Rick Riordan’s best-selling series is a non-stop thrill-ride and a classic of mythic proportions.

The year is 1901--it's been twenty-three years since Peter and the Lost Boys returned from Rundoon. Since then, nobody on the island has grown a day older, and the Lost Boys continue their friendship with the Mollusk tribe, and their rivalry with Captain Hook. Meanwhile in London, Molly has married George Darling and is raising three children: Wendy, Michael, and John.

One night a visitor appears at her door; it's James, one of Peter's original Lost Boys. He is now working for Scotland Yard and suspects that the heir to England's throne, Prince Albert Edward, is under the influence of shadow creatures. These shadow creatures are determined to find a secret cache of startstuff which fell to London many centuries ago. The starstuff is hidden in an underground vault which has only one key: the Sword of Mercy, a legendary weapon kept with the Crown Jewels. Molly is determined to help, but when she suddenly goes missing, it is up to her eleven-year-old daughter, Wendy, to keep the starstuff out of the Others' clutches. She has heard her mother's stories of a flying boy named Peter Pan, and he may be her only hope in saving the world from a shadowy doom...

In the summer of 2008, sixteen teenage girls won exclusive access to dozens of the most politically powerful women in America. These congresswomen, journalists, and activists were supposed to talk to the young women about leadership skills and how to impact public policy, but they couldn’t help sharing much more. They told funny, sad, and inspiring personal tales of missteps and small braveries, as well as of great leaps; they also talked to the girls about power pitfalls, power surges, powerful beginnings, and power suits.

Now those secrets are available to you. The wisdom imparted in this unforgettable collection of funny, thoughtful, and inspiring true stories will prove invaluable to women of all ages, aspirations, and lifestyles—in situations from the PTA to a power lunch, from the kitchen table to the corner office.

What happens when two high school teachers get fed up with their soaring grocery bills and decide to try to feed themselves on one dollar each, per day? Authors Kerri Leonard and Christopher Greenslate describe how they did it—and also include sections about eating on a little more than $4 a day, as well as on the actual costs of eating a healthy diet. On a Dollar a Day also includes fascinating facts about the way our food gets to the table and the hidden costs—both personal and financial—along the way:

* How food companies “short size” packages so that you pay more for less food
* Why one tablespoon of salad dressing costs as much as a whole orange
* How grocery stores auction off foods past their “sell by” dates
* Why processed foods have a higher markup than fresh foods
* Why it takes so long for food prices to drop, even after fuel and shipping costs go down
* How 36 million Americans have limited food options, even during a national obesity epidemic

In his follow-up to the New York Times bestseller What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, #1 executive coach Marshall Goldsmith shares the ways in which to get—and keep—our Mojo. Our professional and personal Mojo is impacted by four key factors: identity (who do you think you are?), achievement (what have you done lately?), reputation (who do other people think you are—and what have you’ve done lately?), and acceptance (what can you change—and when do you need to just “let it go”?). Goldsmith outlines the positive actions leaders must take, with their teams or themselves, to initiate winning streaks and keep them coming.

Mojo is: that positive spirit—towards what we are doing—now—that starts from the inside—and radiates to the outside. Mojo is at its peak when we are experiencing both happiness and meaning in what we are doing and communicating this experience to the world around us. The Mojo Toolkit provides fourteen practical tools to help you achieve both happiness and meaning—not only in business, but in life.