The prime directive has been changed and four billion robots with atomic blasters are poised to take over the universe. Only Robbie Packford, Earth boy and grade six math nerd, can stop them. But when Robbie drinks the secret formula that is supposed to make him invincible, he turns into a mythical creature from the planet Kerbosky with a disturbing craving for raw meat. Will Robbie reach the nerve center in time to save planet Earth from destruction? And what do four billion not nice robots have to do with the chances of the Vancouver Canucks winning the Stanley Cup anyway?
Sheila, Rusty and Katie are on the road again. Fresh from their adventures in Barkerville, the trio is now in southern Alberta. Sheila has been anxiously anticipating her reunion with her father and is worried about how they will get along. Her fears are confirmed when they arrive at the Triple W Ranch and he is not there to greet them. When the police arrive, Sheila finds that her father is in big trouble. Developers want to take over his land to build new housing and a golf course, and when the night watchman at the development is shot, all the evidence points to Sheila's father. Sheila tries to help out, but the clues she finds only make things worse. Is Sheila's dad guilty? She doesn't think so and with help from the others sets out to prove it.
Rusty, Katie and Sheila are sent out of town with Rusty's grandparents to keep them out of trouble. This time the trio is in historic Barkerville, a gold rush town with a secret. After witnessing what they take to be a ghost in the night, the three friends find themselves involved in a mystery from the past that seems to have a few other people interested as well. New information has come to light about a fortune in missing gold, a centuries-old curse and a missing miner. While the three budding detectives try and figure out which of the aging prospectors they keep running into is actually a ghost, they find they are in a race against time to recover the gold and return it to its rightful owners to avert a tragedy. Will they find the gold in time? Or will they suffer the fate of Three Finger Evans, the missing miner?
The summer is off to a lousy start when Levi's bike is stolen from outside the corner store. He feels even worse because he didn't lock it. But when his best friend Riley's locked bike is stolen the very next day, the boys are determined to get both of them back. When they discover there has been a string of bicycle thefts in the area, the friends hatch several plans to find the culprit. There are so many potential suspects--Steve Morrow and his gang, the tattooed guy who sits at the bus stop, the owners of the secondhand-bike store. There's also Emily Grimshaw, Levi's childhood nemesis, who keeps popping up and showing a peculiar interest in the thefts. Does she really want to help or is she involved somehow? And will Levi and Riley ever see their beloved bikes again?
Melissa is waiting for the "new life" that her mother Sharlene has promised her since a fire devastated their family. But nothing ever seems to change. Melissa has difficulty making friends at school, they never have enough money and her little brother Cody is a brat. When Sharlene announces that they will be spending the month of August at a remote cabin on a wilderness lake, Melissa is less than thrilled. But there is more to do at the lake than she expected, and she is surprised to learn that her mother knows how to paddle a canoe, fish and make bannock and s'mores. On an island in the middle of the lake, Melissa meets Alice, a strange girl who is writing a fantasy novel. Alice shares her tree fort on the island with Melissa, and while at first Melissa is attracted to Alice's strong personality and her stories of her "perfect family," she becomes increasingly uneasy around Alice. As Melissa's relationship with her mother improves and her confidence increases, she is able to hold her own with Alice and start to appreciate her own imperfect family.
Beloved illustrator Wallace Edwards invites us into the world of Professor I.B. Doodling, a traveling artist who takes suggestions from schoolchildren in order to create fantastical hybrid animals. The result of these visits is Unnatural Selections, a collection of magnificent beasts, from the stately Whalephant to the talented Lizabouboon. Sure to inspire the imagination, Wallace Edwards’s intricate illustrations invite you to pore over them again and again. A supplementary index lists additional creatures to spot throughout the book’s pages, encouraging readers to go back for a second, and a third, look.
Thea and her dad are always on the move, from one small Cariboo town to another, trying to leave behind the pain of Thea's mom's death. They never stay long enough in one place for Thea to make friends, but when her dad gets work renovating a guest ranch on Gumboot Lake, she dares to hope that their wandering days are over. At the ranch she makes friends with Van, a local boy, and works hard to build the trust of an abused horse named Renegade. When Thea unearths the decades-old story of a four-year-old girl who disappeared from the ranch and was never seen again, she enlists Van to help her solve the mystery. When some disturbing facts come to light, she finally starts to come to terms with the losses in her own life.
Josh Johnson's mother wants him to run for class president. Josh just wants to run and hide. If only there were a club to help downtrodden eleven-year-olds escape their parents' ambitions! But since no such club exists, Josh has to invent one -- he calls it Dunces Anonymous, and before he knows it, the membership is up to three. Magnolia and Wang help Josh lose the school presidential election, but that's just the beginning of the club's activities. Magnolia, pressured by her mom into trying out for the role of Juliet in the school's play, finds herself fending off the advances of an overly amorous Romeo. Wang's father has forced him to join the school chess club, but Wang desperately wants to take fencing lessons instead. As the three friends try to free Magnolia from the school play, liberate Wang from the chess club and get rid of horrible Stacey Hogarth, who has vowed to become the new president of Dunces Anonymous, they realize that they all have talents -- if only their parents could see them.
Fifteen-year-old Christine is visiting her eccentric great-aunt in historic Witcombe, where a pickpocket has been victimizing tourists. Aunt Maude owns an antique store and also runs the town’s ghost walk, which gives Christine the opportunity to meet local characters and visitors, including a mysterious young man who seems to know far too much about the crimes. When the pickpocket targets Aunt Maude’s store, Christine is determined to find out who is behind the thefts. Her search takes her through the nooks and crannies of the quaint town full of stories, and she unearths more than one surprise.
After Morgan’s backyard is flooded by the nearby river, her dog, Shire, finds a baby beaver that has been washed out of its den. Realizing that its parents aren’t coming back, Morgan must quickly learn to care for the beaver, which she names Sammy. Morgan’s parents warn her that he can’t stay with them forever. Will Morgan be able to find a safe home for Sammy?
Trevor has started his first job at Ashton's Fresh Marketplace, where someone has been tampering with the food. Cayenne has been sprinkled on cookies, garlic put in coffee, and plastic insects hidden in fruit displays to terrify customers. Trevor and his friends Nick and Robyn decide to find out who is out to destroy the store's reputation. Is it Mattie, the disgruntled ex-employee? Or perhaps the competition? Or is it Alex, their schoolmate who doesn't know when a joke has gone too far? Their snooping makes the kids themselves seem suspicious, and soon they realize they have to solve the mystery before Trevor gets fired for a crime he didn't commit.
Meet Justine McKeen, the Queen of Green. She's trying to save the planet, one person at a time, and when she decides to get something done, it's a lot of fun. When a small bird is injured after flying into a school window, the students are shocked and upset. But they are even more shocked when school bully Jimmy Blatzo rescues the bird and nurses it back to health. Blatzo may have saved one bird, but the problem is much bigger and not confined to the school grounds. Birds are flying into the windows at the town hall too. With the help of Justine, green activist extraordinaire, Blatzo gets the courage he needs to approach town council. Getting over his fear of public speaking will be one challenge. Getting used to his new nickname, Bird Nerd, will be another matter entirely.
Charlotte and her brother, Jacob, are thrilled to head off on an adventure in their grandpa's boat, The Seawind. As they set sail for Pirate Island, they look forward to a day of beachcombing, playing pirates and storytelling. There are plenty of great treasures to be found, but Charlotte, who can be very bossy, is having trouble sharing with Jacob. When Charlotte accidentally loses one of Jacob's best finds, a piece of driftwood that looks just like a pirate's cutlass, it's the final straw. Feeling horrible for upsetting her brother, Charlotte is determined to set things right.
Following the demise of his first band, Ace has started a duo called Two with Lisa, a girl he has a huge crush on. As Ace and Lisa get serious about their music, Denny, Ace's hapless friend, tries to help out by filming their every move so that he can create the ultimate music video. As a joke, Denny puts together a Two video capturing all of the embarrassing moments—moments that Lisa in particular doesn't want shared. Somehow, the video gets posted on YouTube. Lisa and Ace find themselves starring in the latest comedic viral video. Lisa is humiliated and refuses to talk to Ace—until their fame turns out to have positive results.
Dylan and his friends attract the attention of the police when a summer bonfire gets out of control. Dylan almost loses a job opportunity at a local inn because of his antics, but he is saved by the lies of Heather, an employee of the inn. When he is caught on camera stealing towels from a summer cottage after a skinny-dipping prank, Dylan and his friends become suspects in a number of cottage robberies. Dylan learns everything he can about the robberies, with the hope of clearing his name, and finds himself in more than one sticky situation in the process.
Fourteen-year-old Danny invents a fictitious friend in an effort to fit in at school, but his plan gets out of control, and he learns the truth wasn't so bad after all.
Eric and Chris are avid geocachers who stumble into a very strange search for a series of geocaches. At first they are merely curious, but as the stakes rise and the challenges become more trying, the boys get truly hooked. Convinced they are indeed on the trail of treasure, they become consumed with the search, and though their quest tests their strength, intelligence, courage and even their friendship, they don't give up.
On a visit to a seaside town in Australia, fifteen-year-old Sam meets Annabel, who works at the local museum. Annabel's interest in history is infectious, and Sam soon finds himself eager to hunt for the remains of a boat called the Mahogany Ship—a shipwreck sought after by many. When a storm creates an erosion hole that exposes a structure, Sam and Annabel are convinced it's the fabled ship. Soon all of the museum staff are at the erosion site to check it out. But the same storm also destroys the museum's power; someone knows the alarms aren't working and steals the museum's most treasured artifact, a large porcelain peacock worth $4 million. As Sam and Annabel search for the thief, they realize there may be a link between the fabled shipwreck and the recent theft.
When eight-year-old Josh and his family adopt an energetic puppy with a big personality and a talent for escaping, everyone is sure that obedience school will teach him good manners. But Bagels turns out to be a bigger handful than anyone predicted. He gets into the laundry, the groceries and the neighbor’s koi pond. He even gets expelled from obedience school. Josh and his little sister, Becky, are worried that if Bagels doesn’t shape up, their parents will send him back to the shelter. Can Bagels redeem himself before it’s too late?
Theo is brokenhearted when he accidentally lets go of the string of his party balloon. As he watches it float out of sight, Theo wonders where his balloon might have gone. Luckily, his older brother Zeke knows everything about everything. Zeke explains that it is a little-known fact that all lost balloons end up in Chicago, the Windy City. Then he tells Theo about Frank, who is responsible for collecting all the balloons in the world. Theo is so touched by Frank's story that he decides to send him a message of hope the only way he knows how.
Miranda has one messy desk. It's full of books, pencils, science projects and…other stuff. Too much stuff, says her teacher, Ms. Basil. On a family visit to her Uncle Aldo's one night, Miranda wonders if some of his magician's tools might offer a solution to her messy-desk problem. Sneaking off to the magic room, Miranda finds Uncle Aldo's impressive collection of top hats. Miranda knows that magic top hats can hold lots of things—why not the mess from her desk? At first, the hat seems to do the trick, but soon things start to go horribly wrong. As Uncle Aldo says, you have to be careful with magic.
Eleven-year-old Edie Jasmine Snow has a "perfect" thirteen-year-old sister, two loving parents, and a cat named Dusty. She also has a grandmother she suspects is a witch and a grandfather who insists on calling her Albert. Framed by family summer vacations at the lake, All-Season Edie follows Edie through a tumultuous year in which her beloved grandfather becomes ill. In the face of family tragedy, Edie tries to practice witchcraft, learns to dance the flamenco, meets the Greek god Zeus doing his Christmas shopping at the mall, ruins the most important party of her sister's life and realizes that her family is both completely strange and absolutely normal.
With the help of his wild imagination and enthusiasm, DJ, the hero of Adventures at Camp Lots-o-Fun, deals with one disaster after another—Super Stackers, "weeding" his mom's garden, facing Tiger the Terrible and a misspelled sign. But when DJ mistakenly sells the wrong box of jewelry to his new friend Sam at his grandma's garage sale, those disasters seem minor. Riding his beloved skateboard, Speedwell, DJ sets out to search for Sam, which is a challenge in itself. When he finally finds Sam, DJ is not prepared for the enormous sacrifice he will have to make to get the jewelry box back.
Camrose, a perfectly normal 12-year-old, has inherited responsibility for an ancient bone flute, an object of quest for two time-wandering rivals, one of them lord of the Otherworld. With the help of her friend Mark and the not-quite-human Miranda, Camrose braves fire and much worse to claim the flute and restore it to its rightful and unexpected owner.
Chloe McBride has some reservations about accepting her elderly great-aunts' invitation to spend part of the summer with them in Little Venice, but her initial reluctance is outweighed by her curiosity about the mysterious key that came with her aunts' note. She's also anxious to put the humiliating memory of a disastrous piano recital as far behind her as possible. Chloe's great-aunts tell her the legend of her great-grandfather, Dante Magnus, an ambitious magician who vanished without a trace almost a century earlier, and Chloe begins to search for clues to his disappearance. When her investigations eventually lead her to a mysterious rosewood box, which has been hidden for almost a hundred years, Chloe's belief in the power of magic forces her to confront her own fears and ambitions.
