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Pay it Forward

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Pay it Forward

By: Catherine Ryan Hyde
Narrated by: William Dufris
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Buy Now for $26.81

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About this listen

An immediate bestseller when first published, Pay It Forward captured hearts all over the world, became a wildly popular film, and spawned a generation of increased altruism. This anniversary edition includes a new introduction by the author. It takes an inspiring and moving tale of a young boy who believed in the power of kindness and brings it to a new generation of readers.

Twelve-year-old Trevor McKinney accepts his social studies teacher’s challenge: come up with a plan to change the world. His idea is simple: Do a good deed for three people and ask them to “pay it forward” to three others in need. He envisions a vast movement of kindness and goodwill spreading beyond his small California town and across the world. The project, however, appears to falter. Jerry, a bum who receives some allowance money from Trevor, returns to a life of dissolution. Trevor wants his pretty, hardworking mother—a woman who raised him lovingly despite struggles with alcoholism—to marry his teacher, Reuben St. Clair. Reuben is a scarred, bitter, untrusting man with a disfiguring injury from Vietnam. He seems to come alive only when in front of his class. For a time that matchmaking brings nothing but problems. Ultimately, though, unusual things start to happen. Crime rates dip across the nation, and nobody seems to know why. Then a journalist tracks down the source: an epidemic of random acts of kindness.

Anyone who has ever despaired of one person’s ability to effect change will rejoice in Trevor’s courage and determination to see the good in everyone.
Contemporary Family Life Genre Fiction Movie, TV & Video Game Tie-Ins Funny
All stars
Most relevant
I loved this story. A vision for all of us - I just wish it could be true.

If only ...

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Pay it Forward is a wonderful book. We need more books like this and ones written in a way that is suitable for year 3 primary school children. It teaches such wonderful values that children can learn as early as possible. We actually need a whole population with values that we read in this book.

H

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Young Trevor, almost to good to be believable, wants to make the world a better, more compassionate place by giving kindness to others. exactly what this crazy world needs now.

if only this really happened

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In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.