Award Winning and Notable Children's Books PreK - 8

A poor Japanese woman maneuvers events to change the lazy habits of her son.

Inspired by a traditional African folktale, this is the story of Mufaro, who is proud of his two beautiful daughters. Nyasha is kind and considerate, but everyone--except Mufaro--knows that Manyara is selfish and bad-tempered. When the Great King decides to take a wife and invites the most worthy and beautiful daughters in the land to appear before him, Mufaro brings both of his daughters--but only one can be queen. Who will the king choose?

Business returns to a once-prosperous restaurant when a mysterious stranger pays for his meal with a magical paper crane that comes alive and dances. The Paper Crane is illustrated with cut-paper collages and paintings. It is a wonderful book to use with children learning about patterns in storytelling.

Saxophone-playing Miles and his Swamp Band find a bevy of sharp-toothed, long-tailed alligators who love to listen to their music. But little do Miles and his band know what the alligators plan for them at the close of their jubilant all-night ball!

A fine retelling of the biblical story with equally good pictures.

After their home is destroyed by a fire, Rosa, her mother, and grandmother save their coins to buy a really comfortable chair for all to enjoy.

A collection of poems describing the curious menagerie of guests who arrive at William Blake's Inn.

With Papa off to sea and Mama despondent, Ida must go outside over there to rescue her baby sister from goblins who steal her to be a goblin's bride.

Sometimes that very thin line between illusion and reality is not as clearly defined as we would like it to be. It certainly wasn't the day that Alan Mitz stumbled into the garden of Abdul Gasazi. For in this bizarre and eerie place -- where strange topiary trees loomed -- the evil visage of Gasazi casts its shadow. And even after Alan escaped, the spell of Gasazi still seemed to penetrate into his everyday world

My father says there has been a forest here for over a hundred million years," Jeannie Baker's young protagonist tells us, and we follow him on a visit to this tropical rain forest in North Queensland, Australia. We walk with him among the ancient trees as he pretends it is a time long ago, when extinct and rare animals lived in the forest and aboriginal children played there. But for how much longer will the forest still be there, he wonders?

Dear Reader, Here are the postcards and snapshots that Stringbean Coe and his brother Fred sent home from the long trip they made one summer in Fred's truck. Their grandfather made this album for the family--and for you. Enjoy yourselves! Love, Vera and Jennifer Stringbean Coe, his big brother, Fred, and their dog, Potato, are driving from Kansas to California in a pickup truck with a little house built on the back. Reading the postcards they send home every day is the next best thing to having a cross-country adventure all your own.

The neighbors aren't too happy about Henry and his beat-up old house. Why doesn't he clean it up, and weed his garden and sweep his walk? Henry's got better things to do. Tired of being bothered, he finally gets fed up and moves away. The funny thing is, nobody's really happy when he does--not the neighbors, and not Henry.

No one can tell a story quite like Bidemmi. When she starts to draw, her imagination takes off. Enter her world, look at her pictures, and watch her stories grow and grow--just like the forest of cherry trees she imagines right on her own block.

Hannah loves gorillas and longs to see a real one. Unfortunately, her father is always too busy -- or too tired -- to take her to the zoo. But on the night before her birthday, something extraordinary happens and Hannah's wish finally comes true.

A little girl and her friend must pass a water hole, desert, river, and trading post -- all teeming with wild animals -- on their imaginative trip to school.

Alex feels that he does not have much in common with his stepfather Jake until a fuzzy spider brings them together.

Text and pictures try to make possible the conceptualization of a million, a billion, and a trillion.

The Mysteries of Harris Burdick has stimulated the minds of readers of all ages and backgrounds. Now the original fourteen drawings are available in a large portfolio edition of loose sheets. In addition, a newly discovered fifteenth drawing, titled The Youngest Magician, has been added, as well as an updated introduction by the author. The puzzles of these mysterious drawings will be even more provocative because of the larger size and the exceptional printing quality. For the first time, the drawings can be shared with groups or displayed singly.

After a shipbuilder rescues an injured goose, a mysterious woman arrives offering to work as a sail maker. She weaves sails of unparalleled quality and the two soon fall in love. But when a rich man orders a set of special sails, their happiness is threatened by an astonishing secret.

This first book about Duke's guinea pigs was a phenomenal success, and for excellent reasons; these critters roll and tumble and clamber everywhere at once, with barely-contained zeal that will bring smiles to all onlookers' faces. By the way, the book also teaches the alphabet. For more hijinks involving this exuberant bunch in a domestic setting, pass the Guinea Pig board books: Bedtime, Clean-Up Day, The Playground, and What Bounces?

Start with a single rose. Add hollyhocks and marigold, sunflowers and zinnias. Voilà! A quiet, tranquil, beautiful garden grows before your eyes. But who's that hiding in the corner?

Curious about death, three sixth-grade boys decide to spy on an old man waiting for him to die, but they end up becoming his friends.

This version of the Cinderella story, in which a young girl overcomes the wickedness of her stepsister and stepmother to become the bride of a prince, is based on ancient Chinese manuscripts written 1000 years before the earliest European version.

"Doctor De Soto, the dentist, did very good work." With the aid of his able assistant, Mrs. De Soto, he copes with the toothaches of animals large and small. His expertise is so great that his fortunate patients never feel any pain. Since he's a mouse, Doctor De Soto refuses to treat "dangerous" animals--that is, animals who have a taste for mice. But one day a fox shows up and begs for relief from the tooth that's killing him. How can the kindhearted De Sotos turn him away? But how can they make sure that the fox doesn't give in to his baser instincts once his tooth is fixed? Those clever De Sotos will find a way.

"The simple strains of this old Christmas melody are superbly reflected in the graceful, delicate, yet strong images that dePaola brings to the page.

After hearing the legend retold by the tribe's oldest member, Little Wolf hopes to someday witness the beginning of the buffaloes at the sacred lake.

Here is a world of wonders, from A to Z. Inspired by seventeenth-century French trade engravings, Anita Lobel's brilliant paintings of the shopkeepers on Market Street--each composed of his or her wares--will provide blissful hours for all who join the Lobels on an unforgettable shopping spree.

Over thirty years ago, Peter and Judy first found the game--Jumanji--with the instructions that once the game is started, it must be finished or it will go on forever.

The Grey Lady loves strawberries. But so does the Strawberry Snatcher, and unfortunately for the Grey Lady he is not far away and getting closer all the time. Past flower shops and bakeries he stalks her, silently, steadily, biding his time. He pursues her by foot along haunting red-brick paths, and then by skateboard into the mysterious depths of a swamp both beautiful and terrifying. Closer and closer he gets, and yet the Grey Lady escapes him, in fantastic and marvelously improbable ways, until, in the heart of the forest the Strawberry Snatcher discovers instead -- blackberries!

In this folktale explaining why the sea has tides, an old woman threatens to pull the rock from the hole in the ocean floor if Sky Spirit does not honor his promise to give her shelter.

Cassie witnesses a black man address a white storekeeper by his first name. "A powerful story . . .

Many things change for twelve-year-old Rabble Starkey, her mother, and her best friend, Veronica Bigelow when Veronica's mother becomes mentally incapacitated and the Starkeys move in with the Bigelows.

At odds with her successful artist father, Kate rejects him and her own artistic talents.

Jerome, the only black student in his high school and a star basketball player, forms an unusual friendship with Bix.

A forest gnome, Njimbin, tries to prevent Mrs. Tucker from taking over a rural cottage.

With her father long gone and M'Vy, her practical-nurse mother, away most of the time 14-year-old Teresa (Tree) has to care for her retarded older brother, Dab.

A thrilling adventure story for children and young adults by Park Ruth, Playing Beatie Bow follows Abigail as she suddenly finds herself in the Sydney of a hundred years ago as the result of a scary game.

An 18-year-old girl leaves her parents' farm to find a new life in the big city.

The tank and the model plane Conrad built allow his "leak" through time to World War II, where he becomes a pilot imprisoned in a German POW camp.

Leaving home. It's hard for Jess to imagine what it will be like to be separated from her family and friends. And before she goes, she wants to share all the family secrets - all its love stories and all its ghost stories too. There's Birdie and Jack, whose love was strong enough to keep them together despite the deep divisions between the families; Dorothy, for whom the admiration of a rich young man seems the only escape from the toil and dirt of buffing up cutlery; and, of course, there's Jess's story. She, too, has known moments of grief and happiness, all the pain and joy that goes with living.

Written to be read aloud by two voices -- sometimes alternating, sometimes simultaneous -- here is a collection of irresistible poems that celebrate the insect world, from the short life of the mayfly to the love song of the book louse. Funny, sad, loud, and quiet, each of these poems resounds with a booming, boisterous, joyful noise. In this remarkable volume of poetry for two voices, a companion to I Am Phoenix, Paul Fleischman verbally re-creates the "Booming/boisterios/joyful noise" of insects. The poems resound with the pulse of the cicada and the drone of the honeybee. Eric Beddows's vibrant drawings send each insect soaring, spinning, or creeping off the page in its own unique way.

A young girl finds a way to make her sick grandfather laugh again by bringing back the Georgia music they had shared the summer before.

After the death of his idolized older brother, twelve-year-old Isaac's relationship with his horse dealer father grows even worse as he sees his father's obsession with hatred poison their family's life.

Louisa's life in a loving pioneer family on the Nebraska prairie is altered by the arrival of a new doctor and his beautiful, tragically frail wife.

In the land of Ingary, such things as spells, invisible cloaks, and seven-league boots were everyday things. The Witch of the Waste was another matter. After fifty years of quiet, it was rumored that the Witch was about to terrorize the country again. So when a moving black castle, blowing dark smoke from its four thin turrets, appeared on the horizon, everyone thought it was the Witch. The castle, however, belonged to Wizard Howl, who, it was said, liked to suck the souls of young girls. The Hatter sisters--Sophie, Lettie, and Martha--and all the other girls were warned not to venture into the streets alone. But that was only the beginning. In this giant jigsaw puzzle of a fantasy, people and things are never quite what they seem. Destinies are intertwined, identities exchanged, lovers confused. The Witch has placed a spell on Howl. Does the clue to breaking it lie in a famous poem? And what will happen to Sophie Hatter when she enters Howl's castle?

Fresh from his foray into Hollywood stardom, Babe gets a new cover for the Knopf Paperbacks line.

Laura must become a witch in order to destroy the evil power that is killing her brother.

After the Goon moves into the Sykes' house and refuses to budge, thirteen-year-old Howard learns some startling information about his family, including the fact that he is adopted and that his father is connected with the seven wizards who run the town.

Jeff's mother, who deserted the family years before, reenters his life and widens the gap between Jeff and his father, a gap that only truth, love, and friendship can heal.

"Fritz draws readers into scenes of her youth in the turbulent China of the mid-twenties. . . . the generous affection of her nurse/companion . . . her mother's grief over losing a second child, the dynamics of a suffering population venting its hostility on foreigners, and most of all, the loneliness of a child's exile from a homeland she has imagined constantly but never seen".

The evil Mordred, plotting against his father King Arthur, implicates the Queen and Sir Lancelot in treachery and brings about the downfall of Camelot and the Round Table.

Keeping her family together is what thirteen-year-old Dicey does best, but now that the four Tillerman children are settling into their new home, Dicey has to learn to let go -- and find a new role for herself.

Living in the not-so-distant future when the energy supply has been almost depleted, a teenage boy explores the deserted colonies near his father's Cape Cod research station and begins to understand the long-term effects of recent climate and weather changes and environmental pollution on the land a

There were three people, standing in the darkest place, watching him. Simon is outraged that his Mum plans to remarry. He can't bear her new fiancé or the way his mother and sister seem to have forgotten his late father. Overwhelmed by hatred and anger he seeks solace in a nearby abandoned water mill. But another, powerful hatred lingers within its walls. And it is about to be unleashed.

Ida Early becomes the housekeeper for 4 motherless children.

After stealing a valuable painting for the band of street urchins who have adopted her, a 10-year-old orphan must flee Paris.

Retta, Johnny and Roy are the night swimmers: three children whose father leaves them alone while he performs as a singer..

When Ringo, a young Londoner, finds himself in sudden possession of a stolen painting worth a million pounds, his life turns into a series of wild adventures.

The friendship began when Lester saved Alfred's life. Well, he didn't save Alfred's life, but for a 14-year-old boy with cerebral palsy, pointing to the danger and waving your arms is about as close as you get. And it doesn't matter to Lester that Alfred is mentally retarded. He's the same on the inside as he is on the outside. Lester and Alfred meet up with Myron and Claire, two other misunderstood adolescents who don't want to conform to the social norm. Together, they build a "getaway boat," and discover in the process that there are many levels of heroism and many definitions of "special."

The year is 1854, and Anthony Burns, a 20-year-old Virginia slave, has escaped to Boston. But according to the Fugitive Slave Act, a runaway can be captured in any free state, and Anthony is soon imprisoned. The antislavery forces in Massachusetts are outraged, but the federal government backs the Fugitive Slave Act, sparking riots in Boston and fueling the Abolitionist movement. 1989 Award book (tied with the next book)

Aye, Governor Bradford calls us pilgrims. We are English and England was our home...But our lives were ruled by King James, and for many years it seemed as though our very hearts were in prison in England... September, 1620, our lives changed. We were seventy menfolk and womenfolk, thirty-two good children, a handful of cocks and hens, and two dogs, gathered together on a dock in Plymouth, England, ready to set sail for America in a small ship called the Mayflower... After an abundance of prayers and tears we made farewells at dockside and boarded our small ship. Our voyage across the Atlantic Ocean "began with a prosperous wind," but the sea soon became "sharp and violent" and storms howled about us. When the pilgrims set out for America, they brought with them a dream for the future. Sickness, hardship, and heartache stood in the way of that dream. But the pilgrims worked hard, keeping their dream close to their hearts, until they were finally able to make it come true.

Reveals the inner workings of the Museum of Natural History through historical anecdotes and descriptions of how exhibits are researched, prepared, and maintained.

In 1853, few Japanese people knew that a country called America even existed. For centuries, Japan had isolated itself from the outside world by refusing to trade with other countries and even refusing to help shipwrecked sailors, foreign or Japanese. The country's people still lived under a feudal system like that of Europe in the Middle Ages. But everything began to change when American Commodore Perry and his troops sailed to the Land of the Rising Sun, bringing with them new science and technology, and a new way of life.

"This book dispels myths and describes with immediacy the life of the girl whose active conscience made her a pawn, exploited by her own people and the white world.

A clear, fair account of the relocation of thousands of Japanese Americans during World War II.

"Through the description of the destruction of this family, the enormity of the annihilation of European Jewry is shown...A sensitive portrait of a remarkable young girl and her family."

Describes the many activities that take place from the time a sheep is sheared until the fleece is woven into a soft blanket.

An introduction to the basic principles of architecture and engineering including a discussion of structural materials and their properties and such problems as how skyscrapers are kept from swaying excessively and buildings prevented from sinking into the ground.

The Cambridge Edition of Aaron's Rod is based on the only authoritative surviving typescript.

Beloved and award-winning author Jean Little has garnered numerous accolades for her work. Born in Taiwan to Canadian doctors who were serving as missionaries, she was legally blind from birth. Little obtained a B.A. in English Language & Literature from the University of Toronto. She went on to write 44 more works, including novels, picture books, poetry, short stories, and two autobiographical books. She has six honorary degrees and is a Member of the Order of Canada. Little lives in Guelph, Ontario, with her family.

When Ms. Frizzle, the strangest teacher in school, takes her class on a field trip to the waterworks, everyone ends up experiencing the water purification system from the inside.

A rhyming text describes an incident on the Ohio River in 1910 in which the steamboat Virginia went aground in a cornfield.

Describes the daily life and working conditions of migrant U.S. farmworkers, looks at modern agricultural operations, and suggests ways to improve the lives of migrant workers.

Explains how historical facts, religious mythology, folklore, tradition, and commercial promotion have combined to give us the modern figure of Santa Claus.

"'I am only eight years old,' I told myself. 'No little boy of eight has ever murdered anyone. It's not possible.'"So thought Roald Dahl in 1924 when his plan to get revenge on the mean and disgusting candy-store owner Mrs. Pratchett seemed to have worked all too well. Writing about this and other boyhood adventures, the author has recalled only those that stand out as spectacular. "Some are funny. Some are painful. Some are unpleasant. I suppose that is why I have always remembered them so vividly. All are true."We are told of his first automobile ride, in which he nearly lost his nose; of the canings by Headmasters and older schoolboys; and of the grisly methods of Matrons, those guardians against misbehavior who supervised the dormitories. There were glorious times, too, with his big family at home in Wales; on holiday each summer on a remote island in Norway; and in the class of an endearing math teacher who thought numbers the dreariest things in the world.Roald Dahl's adventures and misadventures during his school years are crowded with people as strange and wonderful as any character he has created and are as exciting and full of the unexpected as his celebrated fiction.

A lively history that supplies interesting details added to the names, dates, and facts that students need to know.

The story of Eleanor of Aquitaine who ruled France and, later as Henry II's wife, also England.

In simple language and many drawings the role of the tipi in the life of the Plains Indians is explained.

August 6, 1945, 8:15 a.m. Hiroshima. Japan A little girl and her parents are eating breakfast, and then it happened. HIROSHIMA NO PIKA. This book is dedicated to the fervent hope the Flash will never happen again, anywhere.

The Jewish experience in America, from colonial times to 1950.

An account of the life of a young boy belonging to a Stone Age tribe recently discovered in a remote jungle in the Philippines.

More than 80 different dinosaurs are described in text and illustration.

The workings and personalities of a major symphonic orchestra are delineated from interviews with seventeen musicians, drawings and notes about their instruments, and photographs

A guide to a stay in the hospital discussing what happens there, the people one meets, what will hurt, and how one gets better and goes home.

No one thought Thomas Jackson would grow up to be a hero. Certainly not his childhood friends, who laughed at him when he fell into the river on the way to church and then sat through the service in his wet clothes. The cadets at West Point watched him sweat buckets whenever he had to speak in class and doubted if he'd even graduate. But through it all, Jackson's determination to succeed served him well. He found that war allowed him to be the kind of man he'd always dreamed of being. While other soldiers fell back in terror, Jackson stood "like a stone wall" and went on to be one of the most brilliant and heroic military leaders in America.

Three generations of black women remember their childtimes in this lyrical memoir spanning a century of American history. The intimate details of loving and growing up and the honesty with which they are told will involve all readers, both black and white.

The stages of growth of a forest from a clear open field are clearly explained using simple text. Illustrations are in black and white.