When the manager's great-aunt decides to take everyone at Hotel Jungle on a week-long cruise, a troop of local baboons explores the empty hotel with surprising results for a newly-arrived family on vacation.
Elaborates on the events recounted in the fairy tale, "Rumpelstiltskin," in which a strange little man helps a miller's daughter spin straw into gold for the king on the condition that she will give him her first-born child.
Excited by a fencing demonstration he happens to see, fourth grader Mikey starts taking lessons in hopes that the sport will make him special like his brother and sisters.
Jimmy, the froglet son of an enchanted frog-prince, tries to save his pond from the evil hag and in the process finds himself transformed into a human boy.
While traveling across the Australian outback on a train, twelve-year-old Zach and his younger sister Eve uncover an endangered bird smuggling ring and try to save two trains from a full-speed collision.
Ten-year-old Eileen's life changes drastically when her father separates from her mother and moves out, taking with him the piano on which she is used to practicing every day.
When her pet rabbit's newborn babies die, and her doctor tells her that she may have scoliosis, and her aunt is diagnosed with cancer, ten-year-old Laurel feels constantly reminded of the mortality of all living things.
After learning sorcery to become a healer, a good-hearted woman is turned into a witch by evil spirits and she fights their power until her encounter with Hansel and Gretel years later.
The gods grant immortality to the mermaid Sirena when she rescues a human man from the sea and they fall in love, but his mortality creates great conflict between love and honor when he is called to defend Greece in the Trojan War.
