Family: Poems — by Mr. Keith Keenan

Kindle $0.00; Hardcover $12.50; Paperback $7.00.

The poet describes personal thoughts and feelings in a lyrical journey to understand and celebrate his family. “Family” looks at living honestly in places, not illusions. Figurative (形象的) language, a love of metaphor and sharp images all make the poems work.

Time to Heal — by Aleandra Vasiliu

Kindle $9.99; Hardcover $21.94; Paperback $12.64.

From the bestselling author comes an inspirational poetry book about love, healing, and growth. It is a reminder to strive to change for the better. Featuring more than 130 uplifting poems and black-and-white illustrations, it’s a great companion when you need to embrace self-love and personal transformation.

Seeds from a Birch Tree — by Clark Strand

Kindle $9.99; Hardcover $26.80; Paperback $16.95.

Seeds from a Birch Tree makes nature into a spiritual path. Its message was simple: Haiku teaches us to return to nature by following the seasons — seventeen syllables at a time. With its mix of poetry and memoir (回忆录), the book guides us to the joy hidden in plain sight, leading us to get into a good state of body and mind.

A Poem for Every Day — by Allie Esiri

Kindle $9.99; Hardcover $28.05; Audio CD $18.05.

This audio book is a collection of 366 poems which link to events on key dates—funny for April Fools’ Day, festive for Christmas. This is the perfect gift for poetry lovers of all ages. These poems are informative, peaceful, and energetic!

There are a large number of poetry collections on Amazon. More information, please click here.

By the time she turned 18, Khadijah Williams had attended twelve schools. She had lived in shelters, in parks, and in motels, never in a permanent residence for more than a few months. She had tolerated the blames of students who considered her as “different”.

Homeless since early childhood, Khadijah struggled all her life to hide her circumstances from teachers and fellow students. However, academics proved to be a way for her to find confidence in herself again. For instance, at the age of 9, she placed in the 99th percentile on a state exam, and her teacher told her she was “gifted”. From that moment forward, Khadijah decided to do whatever it took to keep herself in that category. “I was so proud of being smart. I never wanted people to say, ‘You got the easy way out because you’re homeless,’” she said. “I never saw it as an excuse.”

By the second year of high school, she realized that she could not succeed in getting the further education she dreamed of without getting help to go beyond what her current school could offer. She talked to teachers and counselors (辅导员) who helped her apply to summer community college classes, scholarships, and enrichment programs. And in 11th grade, when she enrolled at Jefferson High School, she decided to complete the rest of her school career there—a decision that meant taking a bus each morning at 4 a. m. and not getting home until 11 p. m.

Her perseverance and hard work paid off, however. When she poured the story of her life into her Harvard University college application, she was accepted.

Once Khadijah felt ready to tell her story, it won her notice not only from college admissions boards but also from the news media, including Oprah, who introduced Khadijah on her show. Now as a successful student at Harvard, Khadijah continues to use the lessons of her extraordinary life to help and inspire other students.

Phonetic (语音) information—the smallest sound elements of speech—is considered by researchers to be the basis of language. Babies are thought to learn these small sound element s and add them together to make words. But a new study suggests that phonetic information is learnt too late and slowly for this to be the case. Instead, rhythmic (有韵律的) speech helps babies learn language and is effective even in the first few months of life.

Researchers from the Trinity College Dublin investigated babies’ ability to process phonetic information during their first year. Their study, published in the journal Nature Communications, found that phonetic information wasn’t successfully encoded (编码) until seven months old, and did not occur very often at 11 months old when babies began to say their first words. From then individual speech sounds are still added in very slowly—too slowly to form the basis of language.

The researchers recorded patterns of brain activity in 50 babies at four, seven, and eleven months old as they watched a video of a primary school teacher singing 18 nursery rhymes (童谣) to a baby. They found that phonetic encoding in babies appeared gradually over the first year of life, beginning with labial sounds (e. g. “d” for “daddy”） and nasal sounds (e. g. “m” for “mummy”), with the “read out” progressively looking more like that of adults.

“The reason why we use nursery rhymes is because that is the best way for babies to discover and connect sounds with language, so we are teaching them how to speak,” said Giovanni Di Liberto, lead author of the study at Trinity College Dublin in Ireland. “Parents should talk and sing to their babies as much as possible or use baby-directed speech because it will make a difference to language outcome,” she added.