A retelling of the well-known tale in which two children lost in the woods find their way home despite an encounter with a wicked witch. Whether portraying the fear and anguish of children abandoned by their parents, the delicious sumptuousness of a candy house, or the joy of being reunited with one’s family, Paul O. Zelinsky captures both physical and emotional nuance.
Siblings
The Twelve Wild Geese
The Celtic myth recounts the story of a brave princess who risks everything to rescue her twelve brothers from their magical enchantment.
The Well of the Wind
Two orphaned children manage to outwit a witch and return to their rightful home.
Goldie Locks Has Chicken Pox
Goldie Locks haschicken pox;
from head to toe
were polka dots….
When Goldie Locks spies her first spot, her mother knows it must be chicken pox. Soon after, a steady stream of storybook favorites — including the Three Bears and Little Bo Peep — stop by to wish Goldie Locks a speedy recovery. But how will Goldie get well when her little brother just won’t stop teasing her?
I Am Not Sleepy and I Will Not Go To Bed (Charlie And Lola)
Charlie helps Lola get ready for bed, despite the tigers, whales, and other animals that serve as obstacles.
The Pharaoh’s Secret (Amelia’s Notebook Series)
Filled with intrigue and surprises, The Pharaoh’s Secret includes Marissa Moss’s original illustrations throughout. The novel skillfully weaves history with a personal story full of heartache and family tensions that will entice and enthrall readers. When Talibah and her younger brother, Adom, accompany their father, an academic, to his homeland of modern Egypt on his research assignment, they become involved in a mystery surrounding an ancient, lost pharaoh—a rare queen ruler. Someone has tried to wipe her from the record, to make it appear as if she never existed! She needs Talibah to help her and her high priest, Senenmut, reclaim their rightful place in history. Exotic locales, mysterious strangers, and a sinister archaeologist round out an adventure that is full of riddles, old tales, and, most surprisingly of all, a link to Talibah’s and Adom’s mother, who died mysteriously.
The Lost Conspiracy
On an island of sandy beaches, dense jungles, and slumbering volcanoes, colonists seek to apply archaic laws to a new land, bounty hunters stalk the living for the ashes of their funerary pyres, and a smiling tribe is despised by all as traitorous murderers. It is here, in the midst of ancient tensions and new calamity, that two sisters are caught in a deadly web of deceits. Arilou is proclaimed a beautiful prophetess—one of the island’s precious oracles: a Lost. Hathin, her junior, is her nearly invisible attendant. But neither Arilou nor Hathin is exactly what she seems, and they live a lie that is carefully constructed and jealously guarded. When the sisters are unknowingly drawn into a sinister, island-wide conspiracy, quiet, unobtrusive Hathin must journey beyond all she has ever known of her world—and of herself—in a desperate attempt to save them both. As the stakes mount and falsehoods unravel, she discovers that the only thing more dangerous than the secret she hides is the truth she must uncover.
Jacob Two-Two Meets The Hooded Fang
Poor Jacob Two-Two, only two plus two plus two years old and already a prisoner of The Hooded Fang. What had he done to deserve such terrible punishment? Why, the worst crime of all – insulting a grown-up.
Last December
A teenager, struggling with depression and contemplating suicide, tries to sort out his emotions in a letter to his unborn sister. Fifteen-year-old Steven is struggling with depression and contemplating suicide. He decides to write a letter to his unborn sister explaining why he is wants to end his life. She needs to know about the girl from his new high school and how the freckles on her arm make him go crazy. She needs to know about the Toronto Maple Leafs and trying out for the school hockey team. She needs to know about Byron, all his ideas about chaos and coolness and trying to keep it together. Steven doesn’t know why his mother’s having a baby in the first place … and if the baby is actually a she. Whatever happens, though, Steven knows one thing: he needs to get this all down, so that someday his baby sister will know what happened to him – to all of them – last December.
Wild Magic
The Pied Piper had his reasons for enchanting the children of Hamelin and stealing them away—ones rooted in a deep history of wild magic. Mari and her brother Jakob are among the children who followed the piper’s song, and they are now trapped in a beautiful but cruel world inhabited by a horrid Beast. They must remain there until he finds the right child, the chosen one, who can lift his century old curse. But the price of breaking the curse is a terrible one. This fast-paced, richly fantastical continuation of a familiar tale is a powerful story of a family torn apart by tragedy, and the magical adventure that heals them.