Timothy Limpet feels out of place in his troll family. He likes things to be just so, and most trolls, frankly, don’t. Tabitha Lumpit likes things to be loud, loopy, and messy, and she feels like a fish out of water in her very neat family. Sometimes they wonder if their families really see them for who they are. So Timothy and Tabitha swap places . . . with hilarious and touching results.
Tallulah easily makes her new kitten, Tom, feel at home but Tom decides that since Tallulah makes such a good cat, he should learn to be human.
A child has a very difficult time getting Fred, the dog, to bed.
Natasha isn’t really a bad girl. It’s just that she wants to play on the swing now, not after the wash has been hung up to dry. And she wants her soup now, not after the goats have been fed. Looking after Natasha keeps Babushka, Natasha’s grandmother, very busy.Then, after lunch, Natasha notices a doll sitting on Babushka’s shelf…a doll Babushka tells Natasha she played with just once when she was a little girl. When Natasha plays with the doll while Babushka goes to the store for groceries, she discovers why once is enough with Babushka’s doll…and finds out just how tiring it can be to take care of a child who wants everything now.
Vasya, a little Russian boy, watches and waits through the seasons for the flax to grow that will be spun and woven into material for his new shirt.
When his best friend is lost in a terrible storm, an intrepid young puffin teams up with a big blue whale to mount a rescue mission and discovers that while many other birds match his friend’s description, none are quite the same.
These are stories within stories: the narrator remembers herself as a young child hearing them from her grandmother, as they cooked, hung up laundry, prepared for the Sabbath, or cleaned house for Passover. This framing of the stories emphasizes their continuing pleasure across generations; and customs, idioms, traditions, even recipes that the Jews brought with them from Eastern Europe are an unobtrusive part of the telling.
Fourteen traditional folktales from the different peoples of Russia featuring both clever and silly fools.
It is 1982 and nineteen-year-old Laura Reid is spending a semester in Leningrad studying Russian, but when she meets Alyosha she discovers the dissident Russia–a world of wild parties, underground books and music, love, and constant danger.
When Tatjana was ten years old, Nazi Germany declared war on Russia. Enduring terrible conditions and near-starvation in workcamps, Tatjana survived through liberation, but had more obstacles to overcome before fulfilling her dream to become a teacher.