Big, colorful illustrations and minimal text set the stage for a delightful cast of characters as they go about their day-to-day adventures in one little town throughout the year. Playing, chasing pets, running errands, going to work: following what happens and looking for the many small surprises in the pictures will absorb and amuse children and parents alike.
THAT SQUARE-JAWED CAN-DO action toy, Traction Man, is back in another hilarious adventure. The little boy, Traction Man, and his brave pet, Scrubbing Brush, are inseparable—until the boy’s father throws the “unhygenic” Scrubbing Brush in the trash and replaces it with a “real” toy, the battery-operated TurboDog. It bleeps, speaks, and squeaks—but is not very smart. So Traction Man, wearing his airtight Astro-suit and armed with a bottle of SuperStrong Germo, enters the trash bin and rescues Scrubbing Brush from the Evil Bin Things (pizza crusts, spaghetti, and potato peels with eyes and mouths that hiss “Stay with us”). The Battle of the Bin is not to be missed—nor is the ignominious demise of TurboDog! With this satisfying sequel, Mini Grey has scored another smashing victory for imaginative play.
“Every war has turning points and every person too.”
Fifteen-year-old Daisy is sent from Manhattan to England to visit her aunt and cousins she’s never met: three boys near her age, and their little sister. Her aunt goes away on business soon after Daisy arrives. The next day bombs go off as London is attacked and occupied by an unnamed enemy.
As power fails, and systems fail, the farm becomes more isolated. Despite the war, it’s a kind of Eden, with no adults in charge and no rules, a place where Daisy’s uncanny bond with her cousins grows into something rare and extraordinary. But the war is everywhere, and Daisy and her cousins must lead each other into a world that is unknown in the scariest, most elemental way.
A riveting and astonishing story.
After a devastating tsunami destroys all that they have ever known, Mau, an island boy, and Daphne, an aristocratic English girl, together with a small band of refugees, set about rebuilding their community and all the things that are important in their lives.
An appealing story about a mixed-race family learning to accept different traditions and customs. Alvina has two grannies: Grannie Vero from Trinidad and Grannie Rose from England. When Alvina’s parents go on vacation, both grannies arrive to look after Alvina. But the two grannies have two very different ideas about what to eat, what to play, even what stories to tell. The grannies get angrier and angrier with each other, but Alvina devises a plan so that each granny can have her own way — or so she hopes! This sweet, funny story about tolerance and understanding reminds children that no matter how great the differences may seem, there’s always room for common ground.
Class and gender inequalities of 17th-century England and the state of medicine at the time are explored through the real and gripping story of Anne Greene, an innocent young woman who was hanged and presumed dead, but awakens on the dissection table. Alternate chapters are narrated by Anne and Robert, an Oxford medical student.
Meet Ottoline Brown and her best friend, Mr. Munroe. No puzzle is ever too tricky for the two of them to solve.
Falsely accused of theft and murder, an orphaned peasant boy in fourteenth-century England flees his village and meets a larger-than-life juggler who holds a dangerous secret.
Gatty is a field girl on a manor. She has never seen busy London or the bright Channel, the snowy Alps of France or the boats in the Venetian sea. She has not sung in the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem or prayed at the manger in Bethlehem — or been kidnapped, or abandoned, or kissed, or heartbroken. But all these things will change. As Gatty journeys with Lady Gwyneth and a prickly new family of pilgrims across Europe to the Holy Land, Kevin Crossley-Holland reveals a medieval world as rich and compelling as the world of today it foresees and, in Gatty, a character readers will never forget.
Gillian Beer’s classic Darwin’s Plots, one of the most influential works of literary criticism and cultural history of the last quarter century, is here reissued in an updated edition to coincide with the anniversary of Darwin’s birth and of the publication of The Origin of Species. Its focus on how writers, including George Eliot, Charles Kingsley and Thomas Hardy, responded to Darwin’s discoveries and to his innovations in scientific language continues to open up new approaches to Darwin’s thought and to its effects in the culture of his contemporaries. This third edition includes an important new essay that investigates Darwin’s concern with consciousness across all forms of organic life. It demonstrates how this fascination persisted throughout his career and affected his methods and discoveries. With an updated bibliography reflecting recent work in the field, this book will retain its place at the heart of Victorian studies.