Age

Catalog sorted by age group

22 Orphans

In this tale, a mischievous group of orphans attempts to show their new headmistress how to have a good time. They build forts under tables, hang from the orphanage balconies and ride a cart down the stairwell. Each time, the fretful headmistress’s curious refrain is “Elephants are strong and sturdy but children, remember, are not elephants,” as she puts them all to bed under orange-and-white checkered coverlets. The children soon tire of bedrest, and one morning, the woman discovers they have fled, and only an orange-and-white checked elephant remains.

A Bicycle For Rosaura

Senora Amelia loves animals. In this lively and cheery story from Venezuela, you will see to what lengths she will go in order to grant her handsome hen Rosaura a birthday wish. The delicate colored pencil drawings lend warmth and charm to this tale. Their color and light precisely portray the sense of place–a small town in Venezuela.

Flight of the Silver Turtle

Ben, Zara, Sam and Marcia begin their summer vacation by helping Professor Ampersand build the Silver Turtle, a high-tech airplane. This is thrilling enough, but things take an even wilder turn when a strange woman steals the airplane with the kids inside. She’s trying to evade members of Noctarma, an international criminal organization that thinks the airplane is carrying a secret antigravity device that could be the key to world domination. They’ve got the wrong Silver Turtle, but they’ve also captured Professor Ampersand—and the kids will have to pull out all the stops to find the real Silver Turtle device before Noctarma does.

Thing-Thing

Thing-Thing was neither a Teddy bear nor a rabbit; not a stuffed dog or cat. It was something like each of those, and nothing at all you could name. But it had something special. It had the hope that one day it would find a child to love it and talk to it and make it tea parties and take it to bed. A child it could love back. Certainly Archibald Crimp was not that child. He had just thrown Thing-Thing out the open sixth-floor window of the Excelsior Hotel. Oh, dear, thought Thing-Thing to itself. This is bad, this is very bad.

Wormwood

Panic fills the streets of London on a night in 1756 when the earth suddenly lurches forward and starts spinning out of control. Within moments, eleven days and nights flash through the sky, finally leaving the city in total darkness. Is the end of the world at hand? Agetta Lamian fears so. She’s the young housemaid of Dr. Sabian Blake, a scientist who has recently acquired the Nemorensis, the legendary book said to unlock the secrets of the universe. And what he sees through his telescope confirms what he has read: This disaster is only a sign of things to come. Agetta overhears Dr. Blake’s prophecy that a star called Wormwood is headed toward London, where it will fall from the sky and strike a fatal blow. Dr. Blake believes the comet will either end the world as he knows it or hearken a new age of scientific and spiritual enlightenment. Soon even Agetta seems to have been seduced by the book, and whom she ultimately delivers it to will determine much more than just her fate.

Martha in the Middle

Martha is tired of being in the middle — until a frog points out its benefits — in a funny story sure to have middle siblings feeling on top of the world.Being in the middle is no fun for Martha. She gets squashed between her siblings when they argue. She never gets called “big and sensible” or “cutesy-wootsy.” Sometimes she even feels invisible. One day she gets so fed up, she decides to run away. Luckily, Martha meets a wise frog who points out that the middle is the best bit — the tasty seeds in the sunflower, the sweet peas in the pod, the juiciest part of a watermelon. With beguiling warmth and humor, Jan Fearnley reassures children that being in the middle of things is a choice spot after all.

The Red Necklace

Clever and head-turningly attractive, fourteen-yearold Yann is an orphan who has been raised in Paris by Têtu, a dwarf with secrets he has yet to reveal to the gypsy boy. It’s the winter of 1789, and the duo have been working for a vain magician named Topolain. On the night when Topolain’s vanity brings his own death, Yann’s life truly begins. That’s the night he meets shy Sido, an heiress with an ice-cold father, a young girl who has only known loneliness until now. Though they have the shortest of conversations, an attachment is born that will influence both their paths. And what paths those will be! Revolution is afoot in France, and Sido is being used as a pawn. Only Yann will dare to rescue her, and he’ll be up against a fearful villain who goes by the name Count Kalliovski, but who has often been called the devil. It’ll take all of Yann’s newly discovered talent to unravel the mysteries of his past and Sido’s and to fight the devilish count.

Light Foot/Pies Ligeros

Once upon a time no creatures on Earth died. But they had baby after baby, and before long the world grew crowded. Death decided to solve the problem by challenging everyone to a skip-rope contest — as an immortal, Death won every time, and one by one everyone succumbed to her dare. Soon, every living being knew Death. This intriguing fable is based on Francisco Toledo’s series of engravings of Death, a dominant figure in Mexican culture. Toledo, the heir to the great generation of Mexican artists that included Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo, has imaginatively explored this integral part of life, and his entrancing images are matched by poetic text from his wife Natalia.

The Child Cruncher

Being kidnapped is not as thrilling as one plucky girl had hoped. Her big, ugly villain turns out to be an ordinary child cruncher. What a disappointment! Instead of taking her on all sorts of adventures, he only wants to eat her up. Luckily, she knows just what to do.