Materials from Oceania
The Floods may bury relatives in their backyard, grow cobwebs in every room, and eat slugs for breakfast, but this loving family of wizards and witches is a delight to have next door unlike their neighbors the Dents—a mean, nasty family that shatters the calm of the whole block. Maybe a little of the Floods’ magic will cure the Dents of their obnoxious ways. And if not, a lot of magic will rid the neighborhood of the Dents once and for all.
A talking chicken! Josh knows it sounds ridiculous, but that’s just what Semolina is. And she’s not just a talking chicken. She’s a spirited, sarcastic, sassytalking chicken. And with Josh’s mom in the hospital about to give birth to his sister, Josh needs Semolina more than ever, even if she will only talk in front of him. But when Semolina tells him that a fox is sneaking into the hen house at night, can Josh get his dad to believe in Semolina before it’s too late? Chicken Feathers introduces one of children’s literature’s most original, endearing new characters to peck her way onto the page.
This unusual first novel is based on true accounts of the imprisonment of American citizens in Japanese detention camps in the Philippines during World War II. Louise Keller travels with her missionary family to the Philippines on the eve of Pearl Harbor. At first the country seems like paradise, but soon Louise and her family are captured by the Japanese and forced to live in internment camps. An exciting and thought-provoking novel about human strength and weakness in wartime Jane Hertenstein will donate a portion of her royalties for this book to help build houses for residents of Smokey Mountain, a large garbage dump in Manila where hundreds of people live under scraps of metal and cardboard.
Bee can’t understand what her father sees in Jazzi. Ever since Bee’s mom died, she, her dad, and her two guinea pigs, Fifi and Lulu, have been getting along just fine. Now Bee is supposed to welcome Jazzi, with her bangled skirts and her rock-hard scones and her new way of looking at everything. Imagine how Bee feels when her dad invites Jazzi to move in! Life certainly gets more complicated, especially after Bee discovers that there is something big that Jazzi has not told Dad. Yet knowing the secret makes Bee see another side of Jazzi, one that oddly enough makes Bee more comfortable.
Magic Nights is the story of a cat who finds something that does not belong in his people’s house—something flittery and skittery that turns the rest of the night mysterious and magical. What could it want? Hurricane the cat is going to find out!
Facing the harsh elements aboard their small ship, five courageous sisters become even more determined to find the mysterious island on the edge of the sea–no matter how difficult the journey.
Morris the crocodile and his best friend, Billy, a tortoise, like nothing better than messing around at the waterhole with their animal friends. In five amusing stories, Morris and company do just what kids do during a hot summer —- perform ill-timed stunts on the diving board, get beaten in soccer by a team of moms, and see their wildebeest friends off on vacation (aka their annual migration). By turns wry and laugh-out-loud funny, Bob Graham’s whimsical waterhole gang pays tribute to the merriment and mishaps of young friendships everywhere.
Twins, Mokie and Bik, live on a boat docked somewhere in Australia. They are looked after by a nanny because their father is away at sea and their mother is an artist. Mokie and Bik are always underfoot or overboard. The twins play on the beach with their dog, help a fisherman unload his catch for the day, and enjoy energetic games of hopscotch on the deck of the boat.
The newest boy at Mrs. Timmins’s Home for Orphans and Foundlings awakes at first light with no name and no memory. But a strange girl who hides among the shadows of the orphanage tells him that a mysterious wizard’s creation, the Book of Lies, holds the answers, and then gives him one clue: “Your name is Marcel.” With that knowledge, and the help of three new friends, Marcel begins a quest to find the truth about his real identity—a truth that is hidden in the Book of Lies. As Marcel learns more about his past, he realizes that truth can change at any moment and can be manipulated by anyone, and he begins to wonder if the old book’s so-called magical truth might be the greatest lie of all.
Snake is elegant, calm and a little self-centered, while Lizard is exuberant and irrepressible. Through a series of small (and not so small) adventures, the two friends bicker, compete with each other, go into business and finally, end up as lifelong friends.