The Adventures Of The Quill

Miss Petitfour enjoys having adventures that are "just the right size - fitting into a single, magical day." She is an expert at baking and eating fancy iced cakes, and her favorite mode of travel is par avion. On windy days, she takes her sixteen cats out for an airing: Minky, Misty, Taffy, Purrsia, Pirate, Mustard, Moutarde, Hemdela, Earring, Grigorovitch, Clasby, Captain Captain, Captain Catkin, Captain Cothespin, Your Shyness and Sizzles. With the aid of her favorite tea party tablecloth as a makeshift balloon, Miss Petitfour and her charges fly over her village, having many little adventures along the way. Join Miss Petitfour and her equally eccentric felines on five magical outings -- a search for marmalade, to a spring jumble sale, on a quest for "birthday cheddar", the retrieval of a lost rare stamp and as they compete in the village's annual Festooning Festival. A whimsical, beautifully illustrated collection of tales that celebrates language, storytelling and small pleasures, especially the edible kind!

What would happen if a cheetah had roller skates and a jet pack? This and other questions came up as the author and his seven-year-old daughter observed birds and animals in and around their orchard. What do they really think of us? Why are there predators? Do the prey species know they are prey, and do they feel it is unfair? Does rattlesnake taste like chicken to a raptor? Do animals go to heaven? Are there many rabbits, or do we see the same one again and again? Should you try to catch a bird with a broken wing? These important questions are answered in this book.

Gather round for soup fit for the king in this vibrant twist on a classic fable. With brightly colored art and engaging characters, this retelling of the well-known Stone Soup story will captivate young readers. Noko the traveling porcupine arrives in a village. He's denied food and a place to sleep by all the animals he meets. Finally he's granted a fire and a large pot of water. He adds a few of his quills to make his famous quill soup, which he says the king loves! Slowly but surely, everyone contributes ingredients--carrots, beans, and more. Will the soup feed them all?

Escaping the workhouse was only the beginning of Alan Shaw’s adventures. For an orphan growing up on the streets of Victorian London, staying alive is a daily battle filled with choices a child should never have to make. Then Alan is offered more money than he can imagine; enough to take him to the new world and a new life. He only has to do one thing first - something that could bring the British Empire to a grinding halt. In a series of adventures that take him from sea to sky, from Brighton to Bombay, Alan grows up in a steam-driven era where Automatons walk the streets of London and dirigibles master the air. Pitted against mad alchemists, tentacled submersibles, bomb-wielding saboteurs and the apocalyptic cult of the Ordo Fenris, Alan has his work cut out for him. With a past as dark as his, who knows what Alan might grow up to be? The Adventures of Alan Shaw is an epic Steampunk adventure spanning five incredible tales, from the author of Gothic Steampunk fable Greaveburn.

Jack is 14 going on 15. For the past seven years, he and his younger brother and sister, and his mother and father, have lived in a remote cabin on the Athabasca River west of Edmonton. It's the late 1930s, and the river is almost as wild and untamed as it was before humans began settling along the riverbanks. The reason for the Whyte family living there has a good deal to do with Malcolm, Jack's father, and what we would call his PTSD after serving in World War One. He has never really recovered from the trauma of his experience in the trenches, and his solution has been to sweep his family into the wilderness and remain there, living off the land. But now Jack is of an age when he figures he has had enough of this life, particularly since his father is not the most understanding of parents. Trouble is, as Jack makes his move to leave the family by canoeing away down the Athabasca, something goes wrong on the first day and he breaks his arm, and has to stay stranded, alone, unable to make any more progress. Malcolm comes after him, and somehow father and son begin to communicate in ways they never have. All of this is played out against the backdrop of a powerful river where nature is dominant and where a family manages their lives alone in the bush, with little or no reference to the world beyond.

In this hilarious sequel to The Nose from Jupiter, Alan is to take his first airplane ride. He is off to New York, where his father will meet him for some “quality time” together. There are one or two snags, though. First, his father isn’t at the airport. Then there’s his cranky seatmate, Frieda, who is almost kidnapped while she’s waiting for her wheelchair at the baggage claim. Sally, an abandoned mutt, joins the scene. And finally, Norbert is back. He is an alien from Jupiter who had previously taken up residence in Alan’s nose when he was on a fact-finding mission to Earth. Alan had been, to say the least, an unwilling host to Norbert, but when you’re lost in New York City being chased by bad guys, you need all the help you can get!

A magical pen causes creative chaos in this quirky, comic-style story from the Sid Fleischman Award–winning author of Milo. Best friends Matt and Larry “Craz” Crazinski couldn’t be more different. Matt loves order, while Craz lives on the edge. The boys share a passion for cartooning, but thanks to the school paper gatekeeper (and kind-of bully), Skip Turkle, it seems their cartoons will never be published. But then the boys discover a pen that promises to help them DRAW BETTER NOW!—and quickly realize it’s no ordinary pen: Whatever they draw comes to life! They start small with their drawings—bags of cash, cool gadgets. Next, they get their pesky English teacher to take a unique and extended vacation. But when the boys get a little bolder in their magical drawings, they realize that things don’t always end up as perfect as the art they create... In this funny, slightly zany, and ultimately heartwarming story, Sid Fleischman Award–winner Alan Silberberg demonstrates the power of friendship—and that the best life is not always sketched out in advance.