Meet Poppleton -- he's the new pig in town! He makes friends with his new neighbor, Cherry Sue. He goes to the library every Monday to read adventure stories. And he helps his friend Fillmore take his medicine when he is sick.
Effie Truelove and her school friends Lexy, Wolf, Maximilian, and Raven must put their magical skills to the test. The Diberi, a corrupt organization intent on destroying the world, has returned and has something sinister planned at Midwinter.
Polly loves words, writing, and telling stories, so when she finds a fancy book on her doorstep labeled "Special Delivery from the Writing and Spelling Department for Polly Diamond" she is thrilled; and when she finds that anything she writes in it actually happens she is really excited--but Polly soon realizes that she has to be very careful what she writes because that kind of power can be dangerous.
A little girl who is reading the best book ever gets continually interrupted during exciting parts of the story by an adventurous pirate captain and a performing penguin who do not quite realize how much fun reading can be.
With help from his friends, Fort tries to find and bring the last dragon to the Old Ones in exchange for releasing Fort's father, while they continue to seek the books of magic.
Morwenna Phelps, sent to boarding school in England after a magical battle with her half-mad mother that left her crippled and her twin sister dead, tries to find a circle of magic-minded friends, alerting her mother to her whereabouts and bringing about a reckoning.
In London during World War II, Alice enters quarantine with her boyfriend Alfred, whose tuberculosis doctors think might kill him by morning. She reads him their favorite story--"Alice in Wonderland"--and soon has difficulty separating reality from the story. Eventually Alice is forced to choose between the comfort of the story and the pain of real life.
""Mom reads. Dad reads. And I read, too!" As a young boy revels in learning to read on his own, he begins to notice that reading is all around him...and not all of it is in books"--Dust jacket.
Nine-year-old Liesel Meminger is sent to live with foster parents when her brother dies and her parents disappear and throughout the 1930s and 1940s, her book-stealing and story-telling help sustain her and the Jewish man they are hiding.
"[C. S. Lewis] reflects on the power, importance, and joy of a life dedicated to reading books in this . . . collection drawn from his wide body of writings"--Provided by publisher.
