Lindy, Thomas, and Benjamin, three ordinary siblings, ages 7 to 13, are at the zoo when they first encounter Professor Savant. You’ll excuse me for butting in," he says to them. "But if you’re looking for something really unusual, have you ever considered a Whangdoodle?" According to the professor, the… Read More

“I wish that I didn’t sometimes, but I remember everything about that cursed, unspeakably unhappy night twelve years ago, when I was just three years old and both my parents were murdered.” That’s just the start of Daniel’s extraordinary narrative that grabs you by the scruff of the neck and… Read More

This past decade, we have been blessed with the Harry Potter effect, and that fantastical boy wizard is still casting his dazzling spell across the Earth. What is it about Harry Potter that has worked its way into the lives and psyches of readers worldwide? There have been many good… Read More

On Sam’s birthday, the one he thinks will be the worst ever, his Aunty Dot brings to the house a small white dog she has just hit with her car. The dog, which Sam names Jenny, has no obvious injuries, though in her mouth, she is holding a sprig of… Read More

In the City of Ember in year 241, the sky is always dark. There is no moon, or even sun in Ember. The electric lights come on every morning at six, and go out every night at nine. The city is old, and everything, including the power lines, needs repair…. Read More

      “Look, I didn’t want to be a half-blood.      If you’re reading this because you think you might be one, my advice is: close this book right now. Believe whatever lie your mom or dad told you about your birth, and try to lead a normal life.      Being a half-blood… Read More

"Where’s Papa going with that ax?" eight-year-old Fern Arable asks her mother at breakfast, and from that first line, we’re pulled right into a masterfully told story filled with compassion, humor, and heart. Yes, Fern saves the runt of the litter, but it’s not just a story about a girl… Read More

Fut a whunny bew nook! There are tworty-foo feally runny pyming rhoems about Runny Babbit and pots of his lals in this bazy crook. Didn’t understand those last sentences? They are filled with Spoonerisms, where consonants are switched for pairs of words. Or, as the introductory poem says, "If you… Read More

“It is such the disappointment," says the mouse mother, Antoinette, upon learning that all of her newborn litter of babies has died, save one. Despereaux, his mother names him, for all the sadness and despairs in the castle where the mice live. Despereaux Tilling is a ridiculously small mouse with… Read More

Sahara Jones has a True Ambition: she is going to be a writer. In the meantime, she’s repeating fifth grade, having kept her abilities a secret from all her teachers since her father moved out two years ago. Her new teacher calls herself Madame Poitier. The kids call her Miss… Read More

Peter Hatcher has an almost-three-year-old brother named Fudge, who not only receives all their parents’ attention, but gets away with everything. The only time Peter likes him is when Fudge is sleeping, sucking his thumb and making a slurping sound. Peter walks home to his family’s apartment on… Read More

You remember Frindle, of course, and fifth grader Nick Allen who invents a new word for the word "pen"? Natalie Nelson, a sixth grader who wants to get published in School Story? Greg Kenton writing and selling his own comics at school in Lunch… Read More

Billy’s friends Tom and Alan bet Billy fifty dollars that he can’t eat fifteen worms.  Billy’s going to need all the discipline and will-power he can muster if he has any chance to succeed.  It’s not an easy bet for Billy: at one point he has a terrifying nightmare that… Read More

Ida B Applewood has a pretty perfect life, with her loving parents and her floppy-eared dog, Rufus. She’s been home-schooled by her parents ever since the disastrous two weeks and three days she lasted in kindergarten class at the local public school. She’s never missed having school friendships, as she… Read More

Jeffrey Magee, orphaned at three years old, runs away from his aunt and uncle’s house once he hits eleven. And literally runs—he runs for days and finally slows down when he gets to the town of Two Mills, Pennsylvania. He wows the residents of Two Mills with his extreme athletic… Read More

There are strange things afoot on the thirtieth story of Wayside School. The classroom’s first teacher, the wicked Mrs. Gorf, turned all her children into apples, but had to be replaced when they reversed her spell, turned her into an apple, and she accidentally was eaten by Louis, the schoolyard… Read More

Ten-year-old Bud Caldwell awakens, that first night in his new foster home, feeling like something is stuck in his nose. Opening his eyes, he sees Todd Amos, the bullying son of his latest set of foster parents, holding a #2 Ticonderoga pencil and exclaiming, "I’ve never gotten it in as… Read More

The surprise hit of the year, this easy-to-read first person expose of middle school life told by sixth grader Greg Heffley through cartoons and hand-written journal entries has sold more than a million copies. It’s throw-yourself-on-the-floor-and-roll-around-howling hilarious, and boys, especially, are inhaling this book. All those 97-pound weaklings out there… Read More

When seventh grader Emma-Jean Lazarus encounters the popular Colleen Pomerantz crying in the girl’s bathroom, she ignores her usual instincts to stay out of the messy lives of her classmates, and promises to help. Emma-Jean’s adored father, a brilliant and eccentric mathematician, died in a car accident two years ago,… Read More

Sometimes you pick up a book and it just says, “Read me.” This one has an irresistible cover, a compelling title, and a most unexpected first line that will hook readers and keep them riveted: “The day I decided to steal a dog was the same day my best friend,… Read More

Evan Treski has been feeling angry and humiliated ever since he found out that his little sister Jessie will be skipping third grade. “You ruin everything . . . I hate you,” he tells her, even though he really doesn’t. Evan has always been her friend and protector, and Jessie… Read More

Meet fifth grader Dave Parker, a known loudmouth who is in the middle of his fourth hour of not talking. In spite of being called on to give his oral social studies report on India, he is determined to stick with his experiment of staying silent for an entire day…. Read More

The book begins with a letter signed by Harold X, a very articulate dog who wishes the story of his family to be heard. The X family, aka the Monroes, have two boys, Toby and Peter, and live with Chester, a cat and of course the narrator, Harold the dog…. Read More

Theo Saint, suffering from a dangerous illness, is only allowed out of his locked bedroom in Kensington Gore–one of London’s wealthiest quarters–once a year, his birthday. The Three are the only people he has ever known: his guardian, Dr. Saint, his butler, Mr. Nicely, and his his deaf… Read More

In a house on Egypt Street lives a china rabbit named Edward Tulane, doted over by his girl, ten-year-old Abilene Tulane. Every day she dresses the rabbit in one of his fine silk suits and winds his gold pocket watch. "I love you Edward," Abilene says to Edward each night… Read More

In the first book of the Spiderwick Chronicles, nine-year-old Jared, his twin, Simon, and their thirteen-year-old sister, Mallory, move with their mother to Great-aunt Lucinda’s broken down Victorian mansion. Ever since their dad left, everything has gone wrong for Jared, and he has been getting in lots of trouble at… Read More

Peer into just one chapter of this oversized collection of Greek myth character stories and you’ll see why it’s been such a favorite classic for fifty years. Husband and wife team Edgar and Ingri  Read More

The Prologue of this nifty, tongue-in-cheek little novel explains how, during the golden age of men and gods, Zeus became enraged at the lazy humans who took the gods for granted and removed fire from the earth as punishment. Prometheus, the Titan, stole the fire from Mount Olympus to give… Read More

Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy evacuate London during the Blitz of World War II to live in a Professor Kirke’s house on the English countryside. One rainy, dull day, while playing hide and seek in the house, Lucy falls through the back of the wardrobe in which she chose to… Read More

How delicious, how delightful, how utterly sensational it is to have a chunky-sized new book of Prelutsky poems. Our first Children’s Poet Laureate does not disappoint, with a rousing compendium of 105 rhyming verses about a dog who can s-p-e-l-l; an underwater marching band, impossible to hear and perennially wet;… Read More

Coraline has just moved with her parents to a flat in a big old house where the other tenants are eccentric and odd. Behind the big, brown, carved wooden door at the far corner of the drawing room is a wall of bricks. At night, she dreams of black shadows… Read More

"The first week of August hangs at the very top of summer, the top of the live-long year, like the highest seat of a Ferris wheel when it pauses its turning." This magical tale about drinking from a spring of immortality centers on a ten-year-old girl, Winnie Foster, who longs… Read More

In a wordless graphic novel, a gray dog assembles, from a mail-order Tin Robot Kit, a new robot companion. Together, the dog and robot check books out at the library, cook popcorn, watch TV, and take a Greyhound bus to the beach where they cavort in the water and fall… Read More

Connwaer, an orphan boy who makes his living picking pockets and locks, nicks a locus magicalicus, a wizard’s stone, from the pocket of an old man, and somehow survives the ensuing explosion of magic. The old man is a wizard named Nevery, who was banished from the city of Wellmet… Read More

After his dear parents are eaten by an enormous and angry rhinoceros, escaped from the London Zoo, James Henry Trotter spends his next four years doing the bidding of the most odious and awful of relatives, Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker. His life seems hopeless until the day he encounters… Read More