Smile If You’re Human

An alien child’s quest to take a photograph of a “mysterious creature known as a human” has an unexpected result when a search through an Earth zoo brings an encounter with a gorilla.

 

 

Into the Labyrinth

What a relief when the old story-book is republished and the characters who live inside it suddenly discover they have Readers again — lots of Readers! Princess Sylvie finds herself rushing to get to her place whenever a new Reader — whether in Boston or Bangkok — opens the book. Her mother, the queen, is especially frazzled when the popular story is loaded onto the Web, a weightless, “virtual” world of unforeseen challenges. To cope with the stress, Sylvie convinces the Writer to add a new character, who gives yoga instruction to the storybook’s cast in those moments when they have time off. But stress proves the least of their problems as strange things start happening — words get changed around, scenes disappear — and Sylvie and her friends must launch themselves into the labyrinth of cyberspace to confront a twenty-first-century evil that threatens to destroy their world.

Walking Through The Jungle

As she walks through the jungle, floats in the ocean, and treks in the desert on her way around the world, a daring young traveler spies nothing alarming — at first. But what’s that lurking in the jungle bush? Or hiding at the bottom of the river? Or coiled up near the cactus? A pleasure to pore over, the boisterously colored artwork captures a world of creatures large and small — and mostly well-behaved — from a variety of intriguing habitats. Very simply written and perfectly pitched for chanting along, the rhyming text is also ideally suited for emerging readers.

The Great Good Thing

“Rawwwwk! Reader!” screams an orange bird. “Booook open!” groans a frog. Then the sky lifts away and the enormous face of a child peers down into Sylvie’s storybook world. At last, a reader again! Sylvie has been a twelve-year-old princess for more than eighty years, ever since the book she lives in was first printed. She’s the heroine, and her story is exciting — but it’s always exciting in the same way. That’s the trouble. Sylvie has a restless urge to explore, to accomplish a Great Good Thing beyond the margins of her book. This time, when the new face appears, Sylvie breaks the rule of all storybook characters: Never look at the Reader. Worse, she gets to know the reader, a shy young girl named Claire, and when Claire falls asleep with the book open, Sylvie enters her dreams. After a fire threatens her kingdom, Sylvie rescues the other characters, taking them across the sea in an invisible fish that rolls up like a window shade when it’s out of water. For years they all live, royalty and rogues, in Claire’s subconscious — a surprising and sometimes perilous place. In this new land, Sylvie achieves many Good Things, but the Greatest, like this dazzling book, goes far and deep, beyond even her imaginings.

An Evening at Alfie’s

Mum and Dad have gone out for the night, leaving Maureen McNally to look after Alfie and Annie Rose. When disaster strikes and a water pipe starts leaking, Alfie helps Maureen halt the flood and also helps Annie Rose with some waterwork problems of her own.

Rare Treasure: Mary Anning and Her Remarkable Discoveries

Describes the life of the English girl whose discovery of an Ichthyosaurus fossil led to a lasting interest in other prehistoric animals.