At eight years old, after she stood on a kitchen chair to read the names of paint colours off a chart posted on the wall, Saffron Casson discovered that she was adopted. She learned that her sisters, Caddy and Rose, and her brother, Indigo, were, in fact, her cousins, and that, following her mother’s [...]
When Bird wakes up grumpy, one morning, he is too grouchy to fly, so he sets out on foot. Greeted first by one friend and then another, Bird clearly wants to be left alone but, despite his attempts to deter them, every one of his friends decides to join him on his walk.
Bird stalks on, [...]
Jenny and Alexandra are best friends. They sit together on the school bus, play cards in Jenny’s tree house, spy on Alexandra’s brother, skip rope, and play Jenny Tag. Both girls are creative; Jenny makes puppets and invents games, and Alexandra draws and paints. Though the girls have had their disagreements, they [...]
When thirteen year-old Pauline Carelli-Bloom wins a school short story-writing prize of Roget’s Thesaurus and You Too Can Write a Great Novel!, she concludes that she is going to grow up to be a writer. As it is the first day of the summer holidays, she decides to waste no time in beginning her [...]
Maxwell Kane has size seventeen feet and a body to match. Though only fourteen, he towers over most adults, and sometimes frightens them with his sheer size. But Max is a gentle giant, slow to talk, fearful of bullies and taking the initiative, and terrified that, one day, he is going to turn [...]
Twelve year-old Maxwell Kane’s life is transformed when he meets Kevin. Despite the odds, the hulking giant who’s “never had a brain” and the fierce, mouthy genius locked in a crippled two-foot body become friends, and then more than friends. When they discover that, together they are more than the sum of their [...]
Eleven year-old Jess Aaron’s life is a hard one. The family farm can’t support them, so he and his four sisters and parents struggle to make ends meet on what his father can earn working in construction. They are a poor family in a community of poor families; money is tight and there [...]
When Sarah and her best friend Ben observe the rotten Derek Henshaw getting turned into a frog right in the middle of the cornerstore while trying to shoplift, Sarah figures she has found a great topic for her science project. “Magic: Fact or Fiction,” she announces to Mr. Wyanth, the science teacher, who is [...]
