Nature-loving sisters Maple and Willow smooth over a rough patch in their friendship in their own unique way.

"Come out to the garden," Granny calls to Mary Louise. It's a beautiful, sunny day, and there are vegetables to be picked and a feast to be cooked! But Mary Louise points out there are plenty of vegetables growing in the cool shade of the porch, so why go out in the sun? Together they pick baskets of corn, beans, and other vegetables, then cook them up and make a tasty, healthy feast. Come join the rhyme and discover the reason why Granny and Mary...

"What happens to sea glass between the time it falls into the sea and it washes up on the beach? This charming and inventive book explores a possible course of events, tracing a Coca-Cola bottle that is dropped overboard from a ship near the turn of the 20th century, only to have a fragment of it discovered on a beach by a young girl decades late. Over time, the bottle has been influenced by waves, currents, the sea floor, and sea creatures, all pictured...

In Wisconsin, fourth-grader Ida B spends happy hours being home-schooled and playing in her family's apple orchard, until her mother begins treatment for breast cancer and her parents must sell part of the orchard and send her to public school.

"Let's go to the ball! It's time for the Ugly Bug Ball and all the ugly bugs are buzzing about the ball. Only, there's one problem, not all of the ugly bugs were invited. Even though Stanley is an ugly stinkbug, he's left out because of his stench! Will he let one bossy bug dictate if he can go, or will he gather his courage and finally meet the bug of his dreams?"--

"15-year-old Lolly (short for Lollipop) Emmerson is a free spirit, calle "the hippie child of a hippie woman" by others. Her favorite thing to do is sail her Boston Whaler in the Florida Keys. One night she runs into an underwater obstacle, and the boat founders. After Lolly is knocked out and separated from the boat, she realizes that she's done for and accepts her fate. That's when the manatees arrive. Lolly forges an almost mystical bond with them...

Over the snow, the world is hushed and white, but under the snow is a secret world of squirrels and snowshoe hares, bears and bullfrogs, and many others who live outside in the woods during the winter.

In The Ash Burner, a sensitive, poignant novel about growing up, running away, and the many guises of love, 12-year-old Ted lives with his father, the local magistrate, in the small coastal town of Lion's Head. All Ted knows about his mother is that she died when he was a boy, and that his father-despite moving halfway across the world to start anew-still grieves for her privately. When he is hospitalized after a swimming accident, Ted meets Anthony...

Sario lives with his family on a remote Torres Strait island, which he never wants to leave-but the winds of change are stirring. The year is 1898, and the pearl-shell trade is at its height. When his father is coerced to join a white trader on his pearling lugger, 13-year-old Sario must go to work as a swimming diver to support the family. He can earn more as a pump diver, and is excited by the idea of walking on the sea floor, but the competition...

"Louise and her dad live an idyllic life surrounded by nature. When he gets an assignment to go to Brazil to write an article for a magazine, Louise has to go live in a suburb with her aunt and uncle, leaving her cat, Cash, behind, since Aunt Kay is allergic to animals. Her dad says that it will be for only six weeks, and that everything will be okay. But it isn't, especially when Cash gets hit by a car and dies. And when a new friend's dad shoots...