Today, Maybe is a story about a little girl who is waiting for someone, a friend. She doesn't yet know who it will be. In a series of surprising and humorous encounters, several well-known characters of children's literature arrive at her door. But none of them are the one she is waiting for, and she graciously sends them all away. With her bird to keep her company and hope filling her heart, weeks and then months pass as she waits and waits. When there is a scratch at the door one night, certainty fills the little girl's heart, and she opens the door to discover true friendship is indeed worth waiting for.
Night is a boy who knows it's much more fun to play than go to sleep. When the sun sets, he travels through the night sky in a spaceship with his teddy. Night's favorite game is hide-and-go-seek, which he plays each evening with his older sister, Day. But why can't he ever find her? Night Boy is a unique playful picturebook about a brother and a sister named Night and Day. The rhythmic text and rich illustrations make for a bedtime story that is sure to lull children who say "I can't sleep" into dreamland. Through the personas of a brother and sister, Night Boy offers a unique explanation of how night turns to day astronomically.
Jake, Tommy and Lexie are on a ski trip. In an attempt to squeeze one last run in for the day, the kids head out on their own to ski down Easy Street. But Lexie and Jake convince Tommy to try Wildcat Run instead. Wildcat Run presents the young skiers with more than they expect, including a cougar sighting. When Lexie has a bad fall, the kids are left stranded on the hill in the fading daylight. Will they be rescued or will they have to spend the night alone on the mountain with a cougar?
Bad weather, bugs and boredom -- DJ and the boys in Camp Lots-o-Fun's cabin six are starting to call it Camp Not-so-Fun. To make matters worse, one of the boys has it in for DJ. But DJ isn't about to let that bother him. His lively imagination and wit ensure there's never a dull moment. A bear in the woods, monsters in the lake and a hermit's ghost make for a week at summer camp that none of the boys in cabin six will soon forget.
It's a rainy day. Wellington is down in the dumps and can't resist the smell of his master's freshly made meatloaf. While his master snoozes, Welly devours every last bite. After he hides the empty pan, he eats the contents of the garbage can too. Honey, a sneaky kitty and Wellington's archenemy, threatens to tell on him. Welly's tummy begins to churn and out comes everything he has gobbled down. What a mess! But in this lively, rhyming picturebook, things have a way of turning out better than expected for Welly, and just this once he escapes being blamed for the missing meatloaf.
Jake and his younger brother Tommy are visiting family at a beach house on the coast. Having already lost a race to his cousin Lexie, Jake can't resist a second chance at victory when she challenges him again. Only this time it's a boat race-to the legendary Smuggler's Cave and back. The ocean is deep and choppy, and the boat is harder to control than Jake thought it would be. When he and Tommy reach Smuggler's Cave, the unthinkable happens. The boat capsizes, and they are swept into the cave. Lexie comes to their rescue, but the rising tide prevents them from escaping, and the three of them soon realize they are trapped.
Shelley arrives at her aunt and uncle's cottage on Grey Rocks Lake and is excited to see her cousin Kyle. Her excitement quickly turns to disappointed when she discovers Kyle's friend Marcus is staying at the cottage too. Shelley feels left out of the boys' games. Then the fossil she found at the beach goes missing, and she thinks Marcus took it. But when Topper, Kyle's dog, loses her ball, Shelley and Marcus are given an opportunity to become friends.
Lawrence hates being teased about his dimples, but nothing he does seems to make any difference. Joe goes right on teasing him, and the teasing gets meaner and meaner. Finally, Lawrence notices something about his friend Stewart that may provide the tool he needs to tease-proof himself once and for all.
Googol and Googolplex are on a mission to learn about Earth by collecting a number of items including a blackbird's song, snowballs and a chocolate bar. Pippa and Troy are happy to help, especially when they get to ride to the North Pole in a spaceship. But when they return, Martin, the bully next-door, sees something that he shouldn't.
Kate and Jake have always been best friends; always, that is, until Jake's cousin, Lionel, moves nearby and Jake starts spending time with him instead. Kate struggles with his abandonment and her own loneliness as she seeks new friends that share her likes and dislikes. And, perhaps there is a place in her life for her old best friend after all.
Cheetah is the small spotted frog Amelia brings home in a macaroni container. Amelia longs to keep Cheetah forever, but over the course of a week, she comes to understand that his place is back in the wild. Cheetah is based on a true story, and all the characters are real.
Jake loves to hunt for treasure, so when the famous pirate Captain Kidd asks him to be his cabin boy, he can't refuse. But Jake soon learns that bringing home an invisible pirate can be a real disaster, particularly when the pirate is mortally terrified of his teenage sister. There are many rules of the sea, and Captain Kidd's own cabin boy, Richard Barleycorn, teaches Jake how to face his biggest fear, Boris Baxter, the meanest boy in the whole school.
Nell makes two wishes on her birthday, but the next day they show little sign of coming true. Everyone in her household is busy and wants her out from underfoot and no one is willing to help her find her lost cat. In the end she finds more than a cat and she makes her own wishes come true with the help of a row of tall, bright, smiling sunflowers.
Reg and Keely are twins. Keely loves painting and bugs. Reg loves rocks. Keely sings crazy rhymes. Reg plays softball. Shawna and Burt are their friends. In this series of linked stories, the children's deep involvement with their daily activities never falters, from a bug walk, through incidents flying a kite and dividing labor at clean up time, to a chance to swim in the river on a hot summer's day.
Kate is determined to win her spelling club's spelling bee, but the competition is fierce. She can almost put up with Violet's relentless claims of superior spelling ability, but when Kate and Jake begin to fight with each other, Kate is miserable. She wants to win the contest, but she doesn't want to lose her best friend.
Jeffrey can't think of a thing to write, so he doodles instead, only to have his doodle begin to order him about. Jeffrey struggles with the situation until he discovers that the most strong-willed doodle is powerless against a well-told tale. Jeffrey and Sloth is bound to have children rushing for their colored pencils and their pens to see who and what they can create.
In poetry that winds and wends like a creek through a farmer's field, we journey through one lovely day in Buttercup's life. Whether she is ruminating on the mud beneath her feet or the moon and the stars in the blue-black sky, she draws us deep into her rich and wonderful world. Carolyn Beck spent her summers in fields and meadows. She spends as much time as she can at her cottage in the Muskokas. This is the second book she has worked on with her sister, Andrea. Carolyn lives in Toronto, Ontario. Andrea Beck, creator of the Elliot Moose series, loves animals. She had a beagle named Toby whose black spots reminded her of cow patches. She wishes all cows lived Buttercup's life. Andrea lives in Unionville, Ontario. She created this book using acrylic paint on watercolor paper.
In 1935, a nine-year-old boy's family held a forbidden Potlatch in faraway Kingcome Inlet. Watl'kina slipped from his bed to bear witness. In the Big House masked figures danced by firelight to the beat of the drum. And there, he saw a figure he knew. Aboriginal elder Alfred Scow and award-winning author Andrea Spalding collaborate to tell the story, to tell the secret of the dance.
Michael Maxwell McCallum lives in a world just like ours, but peopled by superheroes. When Michael's hero, Perfect Man, quits his job without warning, Michael isn't worried. He knows that Perfect Man will come back. He always does. So that September, when a new teacher shows up in his classroom, a teacher with a number of special powers, Michael figures it out right away. Mr. Clark is Perfect Man. Mr. Clark doesn't say yes and he doesn't say no to Michael's endless questions, but he does encourage Michael to find his own super powers.
Did you ever try to use an egg in place of a football? Or dress up a live quail in doll's clothes when you didn't have a doll? Or strap rag-dolls onto your feet in place of slippers? In Alphabetter, twenty-six boys and girls find themselves in twenty-six different predicaments when the alphabet refuses to cooperate with them. In the end, the solution turns out to be right on the next page, if only they can find it...
Tom loves running through cow fields with his best friend, Peggy, and his dog, Amos-especially when he's pretending to be his favorite radio hero, the Lone Ranger. But when Tom learns the nearby Fraser River is about to flood, he may have to become a real-life hero and help save his family's herd of dairy cows. This story is based on real events that happened in the farming community of Agassiz during the Fraser River flood of 1948.
If you dug a hole to the other side of the earth, where do you think you would end up? In this wordless picturebook, pictures tell Ben's story of a midnight journey through the center of the earth and the surprising journey home. Ben's mother has dropped him off for a visit with his grandmother, a woman with a penchant for baking. Ben feels lost and lonely until he discovers a chest full of mining gear. He embarks on an adventure that will make him grateful for the hundreds of pies stacked in his grandmother's kitchen.
Yankel loves to tell stories, as long as they are someone else's. He does not see the hurt that his stories cause, the way they spread and change. Then the rabbi hands him a bag of feathers and tells him to place one on every doorstep in the village. Yankel is changed by what happens and finds himself with his best story yet, one of his very own.
Ben's Bunny Trouble is set in a near future in which the world has lost all its green space. When Ben decides that the city is not the best place for his bunnies, he embarks on an out-of-this-world journey to find them a better home. It takes a few false landings and help from a variety of aliens, but in the end, Ben finds his bunnies - which seem to have multiplied - a new place to live.
In Justine McKeen, Walk the Talk, the second book in the Justine McKeen series, Justine decides there are too many cars idling in front of her school. So she comes up with a solution that should help keep the air cleaner. But she soon discovers not many adults trust her crazy ideas.
