ELA

He really just likes to liven things up at school -- and he's always had plenty of great ideas. When Nick learns some interesting information about how words are created, suddenly he's got the inspiration for his best plan ever: the frindle. Who says a pen has to be called a pen? Why not call it a frindle? Things begin innocently enough as Nick gets his friends to use the new word.

Set during the years 1929–1942, and told in eight engaging episodes, this fresh and funny novel recounts a boy and his sister's annual summer trips to rural Illinois to visit their eccentric grandmother. Grandma Dowdel, a remarkable larger-than-life character, continually astounds her grandchildren with her nonconformist behavior and her gutsy, take-charge attitude.

In his celebrated novels A Year Down Yonder and A Long Way from Chicago, Richard Peck carried us happily back to the Midwest of the 1930's. Now he's ready to transport us all the way back to 1893, to the Chicago World's Fair and its breathtaking mix of personalities and glimpses of the future.

A classic fable from Rudyard Kipling's Just So Stories, read by Johnny Morris.

Have you ever wondered how and why the animals came to be as they are? In these magical tales, drawn from stories he heard as a child in India as well as on folk traditions he later collected all over the world, Rudyard Kipling gives some wonderfully imaginative explanations.

Primrose Squarp simply knows her parents did not perish at sea during a terrible storm, despite what the other residents of Coal Harbour believe. For all practical purposes, Primrose is an orphan, and there's no great clamoring of prospective adopters.

Seven superb stories, from the world's number-one storyteller

A taste of her own medicine. George is alone in the house with Grandma. The most horrid, grizzly old grunion of a grandma ever. She needs something stronger than her usual medicine to cure her grouchiness. A special grandma medicine, a remedy for everything. And George knows just what to put into it.

Banished! Old Witch likes nothing better than to fly about on her broomstick crying "Heh-Heh!" and casting abracadabras, but now she has been sent away, by two young girls.

Fresh from Miss Hepplewhite's Young Ladies' Academy, 16-year-old Jane Peck has come to the unknown wilds of the Northwest to be wedded to her true love, William Baldt, her idol from childhood. But her socially correct upbringing in straitlaced Philadelphia is hardly preparation for the colorful characters and crude life that await her in Shoal Water Bay in the Washington Territory.

When his mother decides on a whim to be a missionary in Africa and drags his unwilling father with her, Henry is left in the care of his Aunts Magnolia and Pigg. Henry's sure they dislike him and he's trying to keep his distance, but that becomes more difficult when Mag decides they should take a destination-less road trip.

Whether it's waking up to find toads in their shoes, becoming trapped on the roof, or searching for cheese when their cow only makes lemonade, the Pepin family always seems to get into the most bizarre scrapes. Lucky for them, they have an author with large psychic antennae and great problem-solving listeners who can join the Pepins on their hilarious adventures.

Kevin has a big talent. Some might call it compulsive lying. He calls it common sense.

Henry Mosley decides that he and his pals Riley and Reed need to go on some earth-shaking adventures and make a name for themselves. Henry is the mastermind; Riley's the researcher who's prepared for anything. And somehow fearful Reed always ends up with the scariest, craziest assignments.

This fast-paced, high-energy collection of short works features today's most popular writers and illustrators writing about what it means to be a guy. Contributors include Chris Crutcher, Stephen King, Matt Groening, Daniel Pinkwater, Neil Gaiman, and many more.

The plan was simple. Ethan Cheeseman, along with his three smart, polite, and relatively odor-free children, would travel back in time to end a family curse and save their mother. Now that the LVR (a super-secret time machine) is working, it's easy peasy. Except they didn't account for one basic rule of science: Murphy's Law - if something can go wrong, it will.