Loretta Mason Potts

Ten-year-old Colin Mason, the eldest of four children, learns from a neighbor that he has an ill-behaved older sister who, when he meets her, takes him down a secret tunnel to a fairytale world that seems to connect with many Mason family secrets.

Nine-year-old Maureen is the terror of her neighborhood until the day she begins to explore an old deserted estate and encounters a leprechaun and seven strange ladies.

Maureen Swanson is the scourge of the neighborhood. At age nine, she already has a reputation as a hard slapper, a loud laugher, a liar, and a stay-after-schooler. The other kids call her Stinky. So sometimes when Maureen passes the crumbling (and haunted?) Messerman mansion, she imagines that she is Maureen Messerman–rich, privileged, and powerful. Then she finds a way into the forbidden, boarded-up house. In the hall are portraits of seven young women wearing elaborate gowns and haughty expressions. Maureen has something scathing to say to each one, but then she notices that the figures seem to have shifted in their frames. So she reaches out her finger to touch the paint–just to make sure–and touches . . . silk! These seven daughters of privilege are colder and meaner than Maureen ever thought to be. They are wicked, wicked ladies, and Maureen has something they want. . . .

Three generations of a family on the coast of Maine.

A time-travel story that is both a poignant exploration of human identity and an absorbing tale of suspense. It’s natural to feel a little out of place when you’re the new girl, but when Charlotte Makepeace wakes up after her first night at boarding school, she’s baffled: everyone thinks she’s a girl called Clare Mobley, and even more shockingly, it seems she has traveled forty years back in time to 1918. In the months to follow, Charlotte wakes alternately in her own time and in Clare’s. And instead of having only one new set of rules to learn, she also has to contend with the unprecedented strangeness of being an entirely new person in an era she knows nothing about. Her teachers think she’s slow, the other girls find her odd, and, as she spends more and more time in 1918, Charlotte starts to wonder if she remembers how to be Charlotte at all. If she doesn’t figure out some way to get back to the world she knows before the end of the term, she might never have another chance.

In Greenwich Village an orphaned black cat lives happily with her master, a sea captain. Still, the gentle Jenny Linsky would like nothing more than to join the local Cat Club, whose members include Madame Butterfly, an elegant Persian, the high-stepping Macaroni, and stately, plump Mr. President. But can she overcome her fears and prove that she, too, has a special gift? Join Jenny and her friends, including fearless Pickles the Fire Cat, on their spirited downtown adventures and discover why The Atlantic Monthly called Jenny "a personality ranking not far below such giants as Peter Rabbit." AVAILABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN DECADES, THIS COLLECTION INCLUDES ESTHER AVERILL'S FIVE FAVORITE CAT CLUB STORIES

"The best book about politics ever written for children." —The Washington Post 50th Anniversary Edition, now in paperback DO YOU KNOW THE HISTORY OF THE PUSHCART WAR? THE REAL HISTORY? It’s a story of how regular people banded together and, armed with little more than their brains and good aim, defeated a mighty foe. Not long ago the streets of New York City were smelly, smoggy, sooty, and loud. There were so many trucks making deliveries that it might take an hour for a car to travel a few blocks. People blamed the truck owners and the truck owners blamed the little wooden pushcarts that traveled the city selling everything from flowers to hot dogs. Behind closed doors the truck owners declared war on the pushcart peddlers. Carts were smashed from Chinatown to Chelsea. The peddlers didn’t have money or the mayor on their side, but that didn’t stop them from fighting back. They used pea shooters to blow tacks into the tires of trucks, they outwitted the police, and they marched right up to the grilles of those giant trucks and dared them to drive down their streets. Today, thanks to the ingenuity of the pushcart peddlers, the streets belong to the people—and to the pushcarts. The Pushcart War was first published more than fifty years ago. It has inspired generations of children and been adapted for television, radio, and the stage around the world. It was included on School Library Journal’s list of One Hundred Books That Shaped the Twentieth Century, and its assertion that a committed group of men and women can prevail against a powerful force is as relevant in the twenty-first century as it was in 1964.

By Caldecott Medal winners Alvin Tresselt and Roger Duvoisin, The Frog in the Well is the charming tale of a brave frog who beats his fears and explores the world Once upon a time there was a frog who lived at the bottom of a well. The well was the frog’s whole world, until the day the well ran dry and the bugs began to disappear. What was happening to the world, the frog wondered, and what could he do? The hungry frog decided he must hop to the top of the well to see what he could of the end of the world. Conquering his fear, he peered out, and what did he see? Trees, flowers, meadows, marshes, and all kinds of end-of-the-world creatures! Entranced, the little frog ventured forth to find out more about the world outside his own. Based on a classic Chinese fable, and written and illustrated by the Caldecott-winning Alvin Tresselt and Roger Duvoisin, The Frog in the Well is a charming tale of one brave frog and his journey into wisdom.

27 illustrated short stories full of heart and whimsy, by the Carnegie Medal–winning author—a perfect read-aloud collection for middle grade readers who love folklore and fairy tales. In The Little Bookroom, Eleanor Farjeon mischievously tilts our workaday world to reveal its wonders and follies. Her selection of her favorite stories describes powerful—and sometimes exceedingly silly—monarchs, and commoners who are every bit their match; musicians and dancers who live for aft rather than earthly reward; and a goldfish who wishes to “marry the Moon, surpass the Sun, and possess the World.” Featuring an afterword by Rumer Godden

A Carnegie Medal winner, this delightful fantasy will appeal to children who love Alice in Wonderland and The Wind in the Willows. Major Palfrey is leaving for the wars, and he tells his two girls, Dinah and Dorinda, to be good while he is gone. But the sisters aren’t sure they can be. As Dorinda explains, “When we think we are behaving well, some grown-up person says we are really quite bad. It’s difficult to tell which is which.” Sure enough, the sisters are soon up to their usual mischief. They convince a judge that minds must be changed as often as socks, stage an escape from the local zoo (thanks to a witch’s potion which turns them into kangaroos), and—in the company of a golden puma and silver falcon—set off to rescue their father from the wicked tyrant of Bombardy. Penned at the height of World War II, this tale of hilarity and great adventure is also a work of high seriousness; after all, “life without freedom,” as the valiant puma makes clear, “is a poor, poor thing.”