Animal Friendships

Jack liebt sein Stoffschwein über alles. Es war immer für ihn da, gemeinsam sind sie stets durch dick und dünn gegangen. Bis an einem Weihnachtsabend etwas Schreckliches passiert - das Stoffschwein ist verschwunden. Doch Weihnachten ist die Nacht der Wunder und der hoffnungslosen Fälle, die Nacht, in der sogar Spielzeuge zum Leben erwachen. Und Jacks neues Stofftier, das Weihnachtsschwein, das das alte nie ersetzen könnte, hat einen kühnen Plan.

When Mia moves to Vermont the summer after seventh grade, she's recovering from the broken arm she got falling off a balance beam. And packed away in the moving boxes under her clothes and gymnastics trophies is a secret she'd rather forget. Mia's change in scenery brings day camp, new friends, and time with her beloved grandmother. But Gram is convinced someone is trying to destroy her cricket farm. Is it sabotage or is Gram's thinking impaired from the stroke she suffered months ago?

It's the summer before eighth grade and Flor is stuck at home and working at her family's mattress store, while her best friend goes off to band camp (probably to make new friends). It becomes even worse when she's asked to compete in the local honey pageant. This means Flor has to spend the summer practicing her talent (recorder) and volunteering (helping a recluse bee-keeper) with Candice, her former friend who's still bitter about losing the pageant crown to Flor when they were in second grade. And she can't say no.

Kit-with-a-small-k is navigating middle school with a really big, really strange secret: When she's stressed, she turns into a naked mole rat. It first happened after kit watched her best friend, Clem, fall and get hurt during an acrobatic performance on TV. Since then, the transformations keep happening - whether kit wants them to or not. Kit can't tell Clem about it, because after the fall, Clem just hasn't been herself. She's sad and mad and gloomy, and keeping a secret of her own: the real reason she fell.

When Santa's best friend, Peppermint Bark, gets left in a chimney on Christmas Day, it's up to Chris, Holly, and Ivy to return the pup to the North Pole before it's too late.

Magnolia Grace never wanted to leave Georgia. She never wanted to move with her mama to the farm her daddy owned before he died. But now here she is - in a tiny Vermont town where everybody sings the praises of the father she never knew. Then Maggie meets the Parker family - two moms, six kids, plus a pony. The Parkers are loud and wild, ask lots of questions, and don't follow any of the rules Maggie grew up with in Georgia.

Emma Lane Cake has five brothers, four dogs, and a family that can't stay put. The Cake family travels from place to place, setting up bakeries in communities that need them. Then, just when Emma feels settled in with new friends... they move again. Now the Cakes have come to Aurora County, and Emma has vowed that this time she is NOT going to get attached to ANYONE or ANYTHING. Why bother, if her father's only going to uproot her again? But fate has different plans. And so does Ruby Lavender, who is going to show Emma Lane Cake a thing or two about making friendship last.

Sam traut seinen Augen nicht: Ein riesiges Eichhörnchen streift durch den Wald hinter der Schule! Aber als eines Morgens das Wissenschaftslabor der Schule zerstört ist, glaubt niemand Sams Geschichte vom Riesen-Eichhörnchen. Stattdessen fällt der Verdacht auf seinen Schützling: den Klassenhamster Hamstersaurus Rex.

Ten-year-old Perry Owens has learned everything he needs to know from comic books. So when Perry receives a troubling message from his favorite uncle, Zeke, he knows exactly what's wrong. Obviously, evil newts wearing trench coats must have kidnapped Zeke. Now they're holding him hostage somewhere on Bunny Island, the remote vacation destination that Zeke calls home. On his own, Perry travels to Bunny Island, where dozens of bunnies are running wild. One in particular doesn't seem quite right.

Seit Peter den Fuchswelpen Pax vor dem sicheren Tod gerettet und ihn aufgezogen hat, sind die beiden unzertrennlich. Aber dann kommt der Krieg und reißt beide auseinander. Hunderte von Kilometern und tausend Gefahren müssen Peter und Pax überwinden, um einander wiederzufinden... Sara Pennypackers poetische Geschichte rührt von der ersten bis zur letzten Minute und ist ein Plädoyer für Herz und Menschlichkeit. Der Pianist Rainer Bielfeldt begleitet die Abenteuerreise mit bewegender Musik.

K. A. Nuzum - best-selling author of A Small White Scar, delivers clear, crisp prose that's reminiscent of John Steinbeck. The Leanin' Dog tells the bittersweet tale of a girl with agoraphobia, a dog with claustrophobia, and the friendship that saves them both. Dessa really needs a friend. A friend with whom she can confide and share all the joys of Christmas. But with hope almost gone, Dessa hears a scratching sound that changes her life forever.

There's nothing 10-year-old Lily Sinclair likes about her new life in the city with her single mom. She misses her best friend, who seems to have forgotten her and their secret place, Willowood. She never sees her mom, who's working long hours at her new job. She's managed to make an enemy of the class bully. Mrs. Hiller from across the hall, who takes care of Lily after school, keeps preparing yucky healthy snacks for her. And she can't get her mother to tell her anything about her absent father. Her only source of comfort is her beloved pet gecko, Weemis.

Concerned for Benji's health, the doctor offers him two options: wear the world's ugliest padded helmet or get a therapy dog. Benji chooses the dog, of course. But when a massive crate arrives at Benji's house, out walks a two hundred-pound Newfoundland. And that isn't even the strangest thing about the dog. He announces that his name is Parker Elvis Pembroke IV. That's right, this dog can talk!

Annie has been promised a summer of freedom in the country. Freedom from a difficult school year, freedom from her fake "friends" back in the city, and, most of all, freedom from her mom's life-governing spreadsheets and rigid schedules.

Is it possible to start afresh when you're thoroughly weighted down? Seventeen pounds. That's the difference between Abigail Walker and Kristen Gorzca. Between chubby and slim, between teased and taunting. Abby is fine with her body and sick of seventeen pounds making her miserable, so she speaks out against Kristen and her groupies - and becomes officially unpopular. Embracing her new status, Abby heads to an abandoned lot across the street and crosses an unfamiliar stream that leads her to a boy who's as different as they come.

This gem of a novel takes place in Pittsburgh in 1952. Franny Katzenback, while recovering from polio, reads and falls in love with the brand-new book Charlotte's Web. Bored and lonely and yearning for a Charlotte of her own, Franny starts up a correspondence with an eloquent flea named Fleabrain who lives on her dog's tail. While Franny struggles with physical therapy and feeling left out of her formerly active neighborhood life, Fleabrain is there to take her on adventures based on his extensive reading.

The Wind in the Willows is a longtime favorite story that centers around the animal citizens of an English riverbank. Each animal has a different personality, from easy-going Mole to water-loving Ratty, to the wise and wiley Badger, the spoiling-for-a-fight Weasels, and of course boastful Toad, the owner of splendid Toad Hall, who has too much money and too little sense to know what to do with it. The education of Toad by his well-meaning friends provides a good lesson.

You would think Petronellas 16th birthday would be cause for celebration. After all, fashionable friends are arriving at her country estate near London, teas are being served, and her coming out party promises to be a resplendent affair. Everything is falling nicely into place, until, suddenly, it isnt. For Petronella discovers that her guardian, Uncle Augustus T. Percival, has developed a most unVictorian compulsion: He must eat bugs.

In a courageous debut novel, Holly M. McGhee explores the loss that shakes one girl's world - and the unexpected consequences of the things we do for love.

Westly is a caterpillar who is destined to be a monarch butterfly, but when he emerges from his cocoon, he is not what he expected. He's a spider! Westly flees his home among the butterflies and is eventually adopted by the "dirt eaters".