The Sulky Vulture

Boris the vulture sulks because he doesn't like the food his parents eat or the games his friends play, and even a cuddle from his mother gives him a reason to complain. Suggested level: junior.

A sly debut story collection that conjures the experience of adolescence through the eyes of Chinese American girls growing up in New York City—for readers of Zadie Smith and Helen Oyeyemi. Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize • Winner of the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for Debut Fiction • Finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Fiction Award NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New Yorker • NPR • O: The Oprah Magazine • The Guardian • Esquire • New York • BuzzFeed A fresh new voice emerges with the arrival of Sour Heart, establishing Jenny Zhang as a frank and subversive interpreter of the immigrant experience in America. Her stories cut across generations and continents, moving from the fraught halls of a public school in Flushing, Queens, to the tumultuous streets of Shanghai, China, during the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s. In the absence of grown-ups, latchkey kids experiment on each other until one day the experiments turn violent; an overbearing mother abandons her artistic aspirations to come to America but relives her glory days through karaoke; and a shy loner struggles to master English so she can speak to God. Narrated by the daughters of Chinese immigrants who fled imperiled lives as artists back home only to struggle to stay afloat—dumpster diving for food and scamming Atlantic City casino buses to make a buck—these seven stories showcase Zhang’s compassion, moral courage, and a perverse sense of humor reminiscent of Portnoy’s Complaint. A darkly funny and intimate rendering of girlhood, Sour Heart examines what it means to belong to a family, to find your home, leave it, reject it, and return again. Praise for Sour Heart “[Jenny Zhang’s] coming-of-age tales are coarse and funny, sweet and sour, told in language that’s rough-hewn yet pulsating with energy.”—USA Today “One of the knockout fiction debuts of the year.”—New York “Compelling writing about what it means to be a teenager . . . It’s brilliant, it’s dark, but it’s also humorous and filled with love.”—Isaac Fitzgerald, Today “[A] combustible collection . . . in a class of its own.”—Booklist (starred review) “Gorgeous and grotesque . . . [a] tremendous debut.”—Slate

Children will love following the trails of animal footprints through the pages of this bright and funny lift-the-flap book. On each page there is a hidden cheeky creature to discover.

Captain Wag the pirate dog has been a bit down on his luck. Until, shiver me timbers, he finds a treasure map! Captain Wag wastes no time in getting his friends One-Eye Jack and Old Scratch to help find the treasure. They set sail and overcome terrible storms and ferocious sea monsters. They are nearly at their destination when they are attacked and boarded by Pirate Ginger Tom and his crew, the fiercest cats on the seas. Pirate Ginger Tom has heard about Captain Wag's treasure and wants it all for himself. But treasure fit to gladden the heart of any dog just might not find favour with a pirate cat . . .

Here's a duck who's into everything: cooking,sports,painting,gardening, The more fun she has, the muckier she gets! Finally it's bath time. How long will it be before the duck and her boy are mucky all over again? Sure enough, not very long at all. This story featuring a boy and his very self- possessed duck is full of hilarious and delightful moments and details.

When a giraffe feels left out because the other animals can barely hear him or are afraid of him, an unexpected flood and an innovative idea by the giraffe changes the other animals' perspective.

Anne Miranda’s inventive twist on a classic rhyme tells what happens after a shopper goes “to market, to market, to buy a fat pig.” Back home the pig promptly escapes, and soon the pig’s in the kitchen, the lamb’s on the bed, the cow’s on the couch--and the rest of the animals are wreaking havoc throughout the house.

Rhino hates his horns, especially when he compares them to the curly, twisted and spiralled horns of the impalas, gnus and other animals around him. So his best friend Baboon comes up with a plan - a plan that makes Rhino realize just how perfect his horns really are.

Sam is being bullied at school and he is terrified of his persecutors. When his father has to go off and help in the D-Day landings and Sam is left at home with his mother and little sister, things begin to change for him. He finds a new resolve to deal with the problems around him.