Scholastic Book Fairs Podcast

Baby seals can swim soon after they are born, but they also need to rest on shore. How can they stay safe if the beach is full of dogs and people? This adaptation of the picture book LEOPARD and SILKIE is just right for new readers who love animals. My Reader Level 2.

It begins, as the best superhero stories do, with a tragic accident that has unexpected consequences. The squirrel never saw the vacuum cleaner coming, but self-described cynic Flora Belle Buckman, who has read every issue of the comic book Terrible Things Can Happen to You!, is just the right person to step in and save him. What neither can predict is that Ulysses (the squirrel) has been born anew, with powers of strength, flight, and misspelled poetry, and that Flora will be changed too as she discovers the possibility of hope and the promise of a capacious heart.

Seventeen pounds. That’s the difference between Abigail Walker and Kristen Gorzca. Between chubby and slim, between teased and taunting. Abby is fine with her body and sick of seventeen pounds making her miserable, so she speaks out against Kristen and her groupies and becomes officially unpopular. Embracing her new status, Abby heads to an abandoned lot across the street and crosses an unfamiliar stream that leads her to a boy who’s as different as they come. Anders is homeschooled, and while he’s worried that Abby’s former friends are out to get her, he’s even more worried about his dad, a war veteran home from Afghanistan who is dangerously disillusioned with life. But if his dad can finish his poem about the expedition of Lewis and Clark, if he can effectively imagine what it is to experience freshness and innocence, maybe he will be okay. As Abby dives into the unexpected role as research assistant, she just as unexpectedly discovers that by helping someone else find hope in the world, there is plenty there for herself as well.

Elizabeth has just started working as a page at the New York Circulating Material Repository - a lending library of objects, contemporary and historical, common and obscure. And secret, too - for in the repository's basement lies the Grimm Collection, a room of magical items straight from the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. But the magic mirrors and seven-league boots and other items are starting to disappear. And before she knows it, Elizabeth and her fellow pages - handsome Marc, perfect Anjali, and brooding Aaron - are suddenly caught up in an exciting, and dangerous, magical adventure.

It’s hard to be content with the present moment when you are little. The future has infinitely more possibilities! Here, the prolific and poetic Eileen Spinelli offers us the opportunity to truly enter the mind and heart of a little girl whose dreams reach well beyond today. With Spinelli’s gift for capturing the authentic experience of a child and Rosie Winstead’s utterly accessible and adorable artwork, this is sure to be a book that will inspire kids to think about what their own plans are for someday.

Four children separated by vast distances all undergo the same ritual, watched by cloaked strangers. Four flashes of light erupt, and from them emerge the unmistakable shapes of incredible beasts - a wolf, a leopard, a panda, a falcon. Suddenly the paths of these children - and the world - have been changed forever. Enter the world of Erdas, where every child who comes of age must discover if they have a spirit animal, a rare bond between human and beast that bestows great powers to both. A dark force has risen from distant and long-forgotten lands and has begun an onslaught that will ravage the world. Now the fate of Erdas has fallen on the shoulders of four young strangers - and on the reader! Part engrossing book series, part action role-playing game, kids will love discovering their spirit animals and joining the adventure! This is the first book in a seven-book multi-platform fantasy series.

The team behind the bestselling GOODNIGHT, GOODNIGHT CONSTRUCTION SITE returns with another wonderfully whimsical bedtime read-aloud. The dream train pulls into the station, and one by one the train cars are loaded: polar bears pack the reefer car with ice cream, elephants fill the tanker cars with paints, tortoises stock the auto rack with race cars, bouncy kangaroos stuff the hopper car with balls. Sweet and silly dreams are guaranteed for any budding train enthusiasts!

Jonah and Katherine are accustomed to traveling through time, but when they learn they have to return Albert Einstein’s daughter to history, they think it’s a joke - they’ve only heard of his sons. It turns out that Albert Einstein really did have a daughter, Lieserl, whose 1902 birth and subsequent disappearance was shrouded in mystery. Lieserl was presumed to have died of scarlet fever as an infant. But when Jonah and Katherine return to the early 1900s to fix history, one of Lieserl’s parents seems to understand entirely too much about time travel and what Jonah and Katherine are doing. Surprisingly, it’s not Lieserl’s father - it’s her mother, Mileva. And Mileva has no intention of letting her daughter disappear.

Where is Early's father? He's not the kind of father who would disappear. But he's gone and he's left a whole lot of trouble behind. As danger closes in, Early, her mom, and her brother have to flee their apartment. With nowhere else to go, they are forced to move into a city shelter. Once there, Early starts asking questions and looking for answers. Because her father hasn't disappeared without a trace. There are patterns and rhythms to what's happened, and Early might be the only one who can use them to track him down and make her way out of a very tough place.

Brimming with humor, this sparkling new book handles a timeless children's topic with wit and wisdom. Romp and stomp! Roar and slam! Almost everyone gets angry. But how can young dinosaurs also learn to calm down, take a time out, and behave? The award-winning team of Jane Yolen and Mark Teague have created a fun, engaging book sure to help children handle anger and frustration.

When a tiny fish shoots into view wearing a round blue topper (which happens to fit him perfectly), trouble could be following close behind. So it’s a good thing that enormous fish won’t wake up. And even if he does, it’s not like he’ll ever know what happened! Visual humor swims to the fore in this deadpan-funny tale selected as the 2013 Caldecott Medal winner.

Hiding is Roo Fanshaw's special skill. Living in a frighteningly unstable family, she often needs to disappear at a moment's notice. When her parents are murdered, it's her special hiding place under the trailer that saves her life. As it turns out, Roo, much to her surprise, has a wealthy if eccentric uncle, who has agreed to take her into his home on Cough Rock Island. Once a tuberculosis sanitarium for children of the rich, the strange house is teeming with ghost stories and secrets. Roo doesn't believe in ghosts or fairy stories, but what are those eerie noises she keeps hearing? And who is that strange wild boy who lives on the river? People are lying to her, and Roo becomes determined to find the truth. Despite the best efforts of her uncle's assistants, Roo discovers the house's hidden room:a garden with a tragic secret.

Indie Lee Chickory is the fish freak of Plumtown. She's an expert at making fish faces and her pet, The Lobster Monty Cola, lives in a salt-water pool outside her bedroom window. But while she likes fish very much, not everyone else does, which makes finding friends a little difficult. Sure there's her older sister, Bebe, but she is popular and has lots of friends. So when Indie accidentally brings Monty to school, to disastrous results, Bebe almost dies of embarrassment and Indie is left without anyone. No friends, no sister, and no lobster. One night, Indie wishes on her favorite star. She wants to find the lobster Monty Cola and to be a better Chickory so that Bebe will like her again. But finding Monty and being a better Chickory is an all day and all night job. During the day, Indie works at the theater, showing Bebe and her friends how much she can fit in with their crew. At night, she searches for her lost lobster by building a fishing boat up in a tree with Owen Stone, who works in the props shop. Everything seems to be going well, until Bebe and her gang make it clear that being friends with Owen is a ticket straight to loserville.

When Andy Greenwood is sent to the Reclamation School for Boys, he expects the lousy food, mean drill sergeant instructors, and brutal bullies. What he doesn't expect is an infestation of weirdly large and aggressive ants, or the itching welts all over the staff and students. Even odder, Andy learns that kids never leave the school when they're supposed to. They just seem to get stuck there indefinitely. Following a ground-splitting earthquake, however, things quickly go from bad to horrifying. The school is overrun by monstrous bugs, and Andy himself comes face to face with mutant ants the size of humans, equipped with pinchers that can cut steel. Trapped in a cinderblock institutional building in the New Mexico desert, miles from civilization, Andy must figure out a way to save himself and the surviving boys from this nightmare. A contemporary take on the classic creature-feature genre, INFESTATION is a thrilling, fast-paced story that will leave your skin crawling.

The word gifted has never been applied to a kid like Donovan Curtis. It’s usually more like "Don’t try this at home." So when the troublemaker pulls a major prank at his middle school, he thinks he’s finally gone too far. But thanks to a mix-up by one of the administrators, instead of getting in trouble, Donovan is sent to the Academy of Scholastic Distinction (ASD), a special program for gifted and talented students. It wasn’t exactly what Donovan had intended, but there couldn’t be a more perfect hideout for someone like him. That is, if he can manage to fool people whose IQ’s are above genius level. And that becomes harder and harder, as the students and teachers of ASD grow to realize that Donovan may not be good at math or science (or just about anything). But after an ongoing experiment with a live human (sister), an unforgettably dramatic middle-school dance, and the most astonishing come-from-behind robot victory ever, Donovan shows that his gifts might be exactly what the ASD students never knew they needed.