Against the Odds

Kiki lives with her mother, father, and repulsive old dog. Life is good except that her father, a doctor, feels compelled to constantly embark on humanitarian missions to dangerous places. No matter how persuasive her arguments, Kiki can’t convince him to stay home. Her mother explains the odds — there’s very little chance her father will die because, after all, how many of her friends’ fathers have died? Unconvinced, Kiki dreams up ways to bolster those odds. If it’s unlikely that a girl would lose her father, wouldn’t it be twice as unlikely that she’d lose a father and a pet? When her father actually does go missing, and her mother becomes increasingly distraught, Kiki feels she really must do something — but can she live with the consequences of committing such a terrible, irrevocable act? This perceptive and compelling novel deals with serious moral issues in a funny, deeply human way.

The Contest between the Sun and the Wind: An Aesop’s Fable

The sun and the wind test their strength by seeing which of them can cause a man to remove his coat, demonstrating the value of using gentle persuasion rather than force as a means of achieving a goal. In this retelling of a classic fable from Aesop, we learn that being the most forceful does not make you the strongest. Sometimes the greatest strength comes from a place of gentleness.

Boo and Baa Have Company

It’s autumn and Boo and Baa are raking leaves when they hear meowing. They discover a cat that has climbed up a tree and cannot get down. Boo and Baa try lots of different things, but it’s hard to convince their visitor he’s welcome to stay.