juvenile fiction

Toddlers can search, point, and match, make comparisons, and discover concepts such as rhyming, shapes, and counting. They can learn follow simple directions and explore a book on their own!.

"While vacationing at the beach with her mother, Sasha Samokhina meets the mysterious Farit Kozhennikov under the most peculiar circumstances. The teenage girl is powerless to refuse when this strange and unusual man with an air of the sinister directs her to perform a task with potentially scandalous consequences. He rewards her effort with a strange golden coin. As the days progress, Sasha carries out other acts for which she receives more coins from Kozhennikov. As summer ends, her domineering mentor directs her to move to a remote village and use her gold to enter the Institute of Special Technologies. Though she does not want to go to this unknown town or school, she also feels it's the only place she should be. Against her mother's wishes, Sasha leaves behind all that is familiar and begins her education. As she quickly discovers, the institute's "special technologies" are unlike anything she has ever encountered. The books are impossible to read, the lessons obscure to the point of maddening, and the work refuses memorization. Using terror and coercion to keep the students in line, the school does not punish them for their transgressions and failures; instead, their families pay a terrible price. Yet despite her fear, Sasha undergoes changes that defy the dictates of matter and time; experiences which are nothing she has ever dreamed of ... and suddenly all she could ever want"--Front jacket flap.

On the eve of the 1860 presidential election, as war clouds gather and the South threatens to secede, eleven-year-old Grace decides to help Abraham Lincoln get elected by writing and advising him to grow a beard.

In the midst of a backyard campout, ten-year-old Matt and four other children find themselves transported back to the time of George Washington and the American Revolution, where they begin to live out American history firsthand and learn the sober realities of war.

When young Edward VI of England and a poor boy who resembles him exchange places, each learns something about the other's very different station in life.

While spying on Samuel Kirkland, the first missionary to the Seneca Indians, Young-Wolf learns the meaning of friendship and bravery from his white-skinned brother during a life-threatening winter.

From the maple syrup party at her grandpa's house in the Big Woods in Wisconsin to parties with her school friends in Plum Creek and her first co-ed party in De Smet, Dakota Territory, Laura enjoys all kinds of gatherings.

When Laura and her family move from Wisconsin to Kansas, they make friends with a helpful neighbor who comes to their aid later when they settle in the Dakota Territory.