“Down on the farm of Poor Old Joe, the hens won’t lay and the crops won’t grow.” With the help of his instrument playing friends, Farmer Joe soon has the hens clucking, the pigs hoofing, and the cows mooing to a hillbilly music show. And now, “…down on the farm of Clever Old Joe, the hens all lay and the crops all grow.”
Each of the birds has an egg except for Duck. So when Duck finds a beautiful egg of his own he’s delighted — even though the other birds make fun of it. But everyone’s in for a BIG surprise when his egg finally hatches!
After finding a kidnapped baby who is worth millions, three homeless teens are faced with a serious predicament and must decide what to do about the situation, in a powerful story of morals versus survival.
While trapped in a cave with one of his fellow students, a longtime enemy, Daniel relives his troubled relationship with his schoolmates.
While two friends convalesce from chicken pox, one boy’s mother tells them of a summer, long ago, when she was eleven–just their age–offering a story about a girl named Harriet who would mysteriously come and go at the beach. Who was Harriet? An underlying poignancy adds depth to this winning story with its surprise ending.
Halli Sveinsson has grown up in the House of Svein, listening to the legends of the heroes as all his forefathers did. His is a peaceful society where the violence of the past has been outlawed and disputes are settled by the Council. But young Halli has never quite seemed to fit in with the others. For starters, he was not at all handsome or tall, like his attractive blond siblings. He’s stumpy and swarthy, with a quick mind and aptitude for getting in trouble. Bored with the everyday chores and sheep herding, he can’t help himself from playing practical jokes on everyone, from Eyjolf the old servant, to his brother and sister. But when he plays a trick on Ragnor of the House of Hakonsson, he goes too far, setting in motion a chain of events that will forever alter his destiny. Because of it, Halli will have to leave home and go on a hero’s quest. Along the way, he will encounter highway robbers, terrifying monsters, and a girl who may finally be his match. In the end, he will discover the truth about the legends, his family, and himself. Jonathan Stroud’s new novel is a hero’s saga and coming-of-age–as well as a surprising look at what bravery really means.
As the fourth novel in the spellbinding Gatekeepers series begins, the world is under the greatest threat it’s ever known. The evil corporation Nightrise has amassed an immense amount of power . . . and the devastating force of the Old Ones is about to be unleashed around the globe. To stop this from happening, Matt and three of the Gatekeepers head to Hong Kong–not just the modern city of skyscrapers and wealth, but the secretive underworld beneath. In Hong Kong they will meet the final Gatekeeper, a girl named Scarlet, whose fate is inextricably joined to their own….
Kidnapped from a train station and taken to the distant planet of Galax-Arena, Joella, Peter, and Liane are forced to perform dangerous tasks as slaves to the alien Vexa, until Joella deduces that they are still on Earth.
A dystopian thriller follows a boy and girl on the run from a town where all thoughts can be heard — and the passage to manhood embodies a horrible secret.Todd Hewitt is the only boy in a town of men. Ever since the settlers were infected with the Noise germ, Todd can hear everything the men think, and they hear everything he thinks. Todd is just a month away from becoming a man, but in the midst of the cacophony, he knows that the town is hiding something from him — something so awful Todd is forced to flee with only his dog, whose simple, loyal voice he hears too. With hostile men from the town in pursuit, the two stumble upon a strange and eerily silent creature: a girl. Who is she? Why wasn’t she killed by the germ like all the females on New World? Propelled by Todd’s gritty narration, readers are in for a white-knuckle journey in which a boy on the cusp of manhood must unlearn everything he knows in order to figure out who he truly is.
It is two hundred thousand years ago. A small group of children are cut off from their Kin, the Moonhawks, when they are driven from their Good Place by violent strangers. While searching for a new Good Place, they face the parched desert, an active volcano, a canyon flood, man-eating lions, and other Kins they’ve never seen before. These young Moonhawks are brave, clever, and warmhearted, and all three traits are crucial to their survival. Told from four points-of-view, with tales of the Kins’ creation interspersed throughout, this epic novel humanizes early man and illuminates the beginning of language, the development of skills, and the organization of society. Winner of a Printz Honor for The Ropemaker, Peter Dickinson has won most of the major British writing awards (some of them twice). With The Kin, he more than lives up to his honored reputation.