Stumpkin

From the critically acclaimed author and illustrator of A Hungry Lion comes a unique Halloween story about a stemless pumpkin who dreams of becoming a jack-o-lantern. Stumpkin is the most handsome pumpkin on the block. He’s as orange as a traffic cone! Twice as round as a basketball! He has no bad side! He’s perfect choice for a Halloween jack-o-lantern. There’s just one problem—Stumpkin has a stump, not a stem. And no one seems to want a stemless jack-o-lantern for their window. As Halloween night approaches, more and more of his fellow pumpkins leave, but poor Stumpkin remains. Will anyone give Stumpkin his chance to shine?

When you're a quilt instead of a sheet, being a ghost is hard! An adorable picture book for fans of Stumpkin and How to Make Friends with a Ghost. Ghosts are supposed to be sheets, light as air and able to whirl and twirl and float and soar. But the little ghost who is a quilt can't whirl or twirl at all, and when he flies, he gets very hot. He doesn't know why he's a quilt. His parents are both sheets, and so are all of his friends. (His great-grandmother was a lace curtain, but that doesn't really help cheer him up.) He feels sad and left out when his friends are zooming around and he can't keep up. But one Halloween, everything changes. The little ghost who was a quilt has an experience that no other ghost could have, an experience that only happens because he's a quilt . . . and he realizes that it's OK to be different.

An NPR Favorite Book of 2019 A New York Times Best Children’s book of 2019 A Kirkus Reviews Best Picture Book of 2019 A School Library Journal Best Picture Book of 2019 "An enchanting tale of bravery, heroism, and undying devotion." —The New York Times Book Review After his best friend Sarah leaves for her first day of school, a tortoise named Truman goes on an adventure across the living room and learns to be brave in this thoughtful and heartwarming twist on a first experience story. Truman the tortoise lives with his Sarah, high above the taxis and the trash trucks and the number eleven bus, which travels south. He never worries about the world below…until one day, when Sarah straps on a big backpack and does something Truman has never seen before. She boards the bus! Truman waits for her to return. He waits. And waits. And waits. And when he can wait no longer, he knows what he must do. Even if it seems…impossible!

Winner, Arab American National Museum Book Award for Children's/YA Literature, among other awards and honors. "When a war ends it does not go away," my mother says."It hides inside us . . . Just forget!" But I do not want to do what Mother says . . . I want to remember. In this groundbreaking memoir set in Ramallah during the aftermath of the 1967 Six-Day War, Ibtisam Barakat captures what it is like to be a child whose world is shattered by war. With candor and courage, she stitches together memories of her childhood: fear and confusion as bombs explode near her home and she is separated from her family; the harshness of life as a Palestinian refugee; her unexpected joy when she discovers Alef, the first letter of the Arabic alphabet. This is the beginning of her passionate connection to words, and as language becomes her refuge, allowing her to piece together the fragments of her world, it becomes her true home. Transcending the particulars of politics, this illuminating and timely book provides a telling glimpse into a little-known culture that has become an increasingly important part of the puzzle of world peace.

All she wanted was to skate, but when her dreams come true, what happens when she's thrown into the cutthroat world of figure skating competition? For Claire Boucher, life is all about skating on the frozen cow pond and in the annual Maple Show right before the big pancake breakfast on her family's farm. But all that changes when Russian skating coach Andrei Grosheva offers Claire a scholarship to train with the elite in Lake Placid. Tossed into a world of mean girls on ice, where competition is everything, Claire realizes that her sweet dream come true has sharper edges than she could have imagined. Can she find the strength to stand up to the people who want to see her fail and the courage to decide which dream she wants to follow? From bestselling author Kate Messner comes a heartfelt novel about the fun and frigid sides of figure skating.

We all know the story of the “selfless” tree that gave all she had just to make sure a young boy was “happy.” This is a different tree. This is a different boy. This is a very different book. The Taking Tree is not pleased when the boy takes her twigs to pick on his sister, or when he cuts off her branches to build a house that he burns for insurance money. And the boy is not sorry at all. Ever. In fact, he’s kind of a jerk. So what happens when the tree finally gets fed up? Let’s just say the story doesn’t end sweetly with an old man sitting on a stump.

"Narrator Polly Collier is very good. Her strong, clear voice makes her sound much like a teacher, and I appreciated her explanation to young listeners that she would be reading the text portion of a picture book...It's a wonderful book, full of interesting trivia..." - AudioFile

When Susanne leaves her city home to visit her grandmother, she finds a very special tree of her own in the forest. Each time she returns to the tree, she observes something unique about it--from the sheltering protection of its branches to the scratchy surface of its bark.