Book

Living with his little brother, Fudge, makes Peter Hatcher feel like a fourth grade nothing.

Whether he's throwing a temper tantrum in a shoe store, smearing mashed potatoes on the walls at Hamburger Heaven, or scribbling all over Peter's homework, Fudge is never far from trouble. He's a two-year-old terror who gets away with everything - and Peter's had enough.

When "Fudge" walks off with Dribble, Peter's pet turtle, it's the last straw. Peter's put up with Fudge too long. How can he get his parents to pay attention to him for a change?

The saga of Frightful, the falcon made legendary in the classic "My Side of the Mountain," continues in this breathtaking picture book. Frightful has hatched three babies, one of them a female named Oksi. Oksi does things her own way, which means she is forever getting into trouble. As she grows from fuzzy hatchling to young adult, she faces the challenges of survival in the wild. But when Frightful is not there to help her, Sam Gribley is.

Maftu was afraid of the sea. It had taken his mother when he was a baby, and it seemed to him that the sea gods sought vengeance at having been cheated of Mafatu. So, though he was the son of the Great Chief of Hikueru, a race of Polynesians who worshipped courage, and he was named Stout Heart, he feared and avoided the sea, till everyone branded him a coward. When he could no longer bear their taunts and jibes, he determined to conquer that fear or be conquered-- so he went off in his canoe, alone except for his little dog and pet albatross. A storm gave him his first challenge.

He came into this world named Jeffrey Lionel Magee, but when his parents died, his life changed and so did his name.

And Maniac Magee became a legend.

Even today kids talk about how fast he could run, about how he hit an inside-the-park "frog" homer, and about how no knot, no matter how snarled, would stay that way once he began to untie it.

"Did Mama sing every day?" Caleb asks his sister Anna.
"Every-single-day," she answers. "Papa sang, too." Their mother died the day after Caleb was born. Their house on the prairie is quiet now, and Papa doesn't sing anymore.

Then Papa puts an ad in the paper, asking for a wife, and he receives a letter from on Sarah Elisabeth Wheaton, of Maine. Papa, Anna, and Caleb write back. Caleb asks if she sings.

Until the day his father returns to their cabin in the Maine wilderness, twelve-year-old Matt must try to survive on his own. Although Matt is brave, he's not prepared for an attack by swarming bees, and he's astonished when he's rescued by an Indian chief and his grandson, Attean.

There's nothing eleven-year-old Marty Preston enjoys more than spending time up in the hills behind his home near Friendly, West Virginia.

But this time is different. This time Marty sees a young beagle on the road past the old Shiloh schoolhouse.

Marty feels sure the dog is being abused by his owner. When the dog runs away to Marty's house, his parents say he must bring him back. But it hurts Marty to return the runaway dot to his cruel master.

That's when Marty secretly decides he'll do anything to save the dog he names Shiloh.