Books with author Alexandra Diaz

If parkour reinvents the world into a playground, parkour strength training reimagines benches, tree trunks, and scaffolding into novel yet useful training tools to maintain and upgrade your physical performance. Improving at deceptively basic skills such as crawling, jumping, vaulting, and climbing will greatly improve your potential to face and overcome future challenges of the physical, technical, and mental variety. Before you focus on thrusting around heavy metal objects and/or friendly Homo sapiens for sport, first consider a safer, bodyweight approach to improved athleticism. Building a better movement foundation with parkour strength exercises is both an engaging and proven method to optimize your physical abilities. Here are nine of the best ParkourStrength movements for beginners.

Mom has to go help Grandma, but it's Halloween, and Carl and Madeleine don't want to miss out on the fun. So after Mom leaves, they make their own costumes and go out trick-or-treating by themselves. They even stop in at a party to bob for apples before they return safely to their house, content from their Halloween adventure and with Mom none the wiser.

Carl and Alexandra Day have created a baby record book for puppies. It has room for a paw print and a lock of fur, as well as places for photographs that record such special things as a family portrait, best trick, and first birthday. The book also has a page to keep track of the puppy's medical history. Lively illustrations depicting more than twenty breeds, plus a metal keepsake medallion for the puppy's collar, make this a must for every dog owner.

PURA BELPRE HONOR BOOK ALA NOTABLE BOOK Twelve-year-old Jaime makes the treacherous and life-changing journey from his home in Guatemala to live with his older brother in the United States in this "powerful and timely" (Booklist, starred review) middle grade novel. Jaime is sitting on his bed drawing when he hears a scream. Instantly, he knows: Miguel, his cousin and best friend, is dead. Everyone in Jaime's small town in Guatemala knows someone who has been killed by the Alphas, a powerful gang that's known for violence and drug trafficking. Anyone who refuses to work for them is hurt or killed--like Miguel. With Miguel gone, Jaime fears that he is next. There's only one choice: accompanied by his cousin Angela, Jaime must flee his home to live with his older brother in New Mexico. Inspired by true events, The Only Road is an individual story of a boy who feels that leaving his home and risking everything is his only chance for a better life. The story is "told with heartbreaking honesty," Booklist raved, and "will bring readers face to face with the harsh realities immigrants go through in the hope of finding a better, safer life, and it will likely cause them to reflect on what it means to be human."

When a rumor starts circulating that Tara's boyfriend Brent has been sleeping with one of the guy cheerleaders, the innuendo doesn't just hurt Tara. It marks the beginning of the end for an inseparable trio of friends. Tara's training for a marathon, but also running from her fear of abandonment after being deserted by her father. Whitney Blaire seems to have everything, but an empty mansion and absentee parents leave this beauty to look for meaning in all the wrong places. And Pinkie has a compulsive need to mother everyone to make up for the mom she's never stopped missing. This friendship that promised to last forever is starting to break under the pressure of the girls' differences. And then new-girl Riley arrives in school with her long black hair, athletic body, and her blasé attitude, and suddenly Tara starts to feel things she's never felt before for a girl--and to reassess her feelings about Brent and what he may/may not have done. Is Tara gay--or does she just love Riley? And can her deepest friendships survive when all of the rules have changed?