A librarian named Mavis McGrew introduces the animals in the zoo to the joy of reading when she drives her bookmobile to the zoo by mistake.

An illustrated version of the well-known poem about the wily spider and the luckless fly. Includes an addendum with a modern-day example of why it is best not to trust strangers who offer treats.

Chronicles the close friendship between two Japanese-American sisters growing up in rural Georgia during the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the despair when one sister becomes terminally ill. kira-kira (kee' ra kee' ra): glittering; shining Glittering. That's how Katie Takeshima's sister, Lynn, makes everything seem. The sky is kira-kira because its color is deep but see-through at the same time. The sea is kira-kira for the same reason. And so are...

When a generous quiltmaker finally agrees to make a quilt for a greedy king but only under certain conditions, she causes him to undergo a change of heart.

Dolores has agreed to stop "borrowing" things from her older sister Faye's dresser, but then she discovers a special Valentine's Day necklace there.

On a summer visit to her grandmother's cottage by the ocean, twelve-year-old Martha gains perspective on the death of a classmate, on her relationship with her grandmother, on her feelings for an older boy, and on her plans to be a writer.

Thirteen-year-old Lakshmi leaves her poor mountain home in Nepal thinking that she is to work in the city as a maid only to find that she has been sold into the sex slave trade in India and that there is no hope of escape.

Everybody loves Mother Paula's pancakes. Everybody, that is, except the colony of cute but endangered owls that live on the building site of the new restaurant. Can the awkward new kid, Roy, and his feral friend prank the pancake people out of town? Or is the owls' fate cemented in pancake batter?

Bobby's carefree teenage life changes forever when he becomes a father and must care for his adored baby daughter.

Twenty-six characteristic tales, both romantic and comic, from the folklore of the Celts of the British Isles, collected from both Gaelic and English speaking peasants.