When Farmer Brown’s pumpkin goes missing, the Berenstain Bears help crack the case in this classic Beginner Book by Stan and Jan Berenstain. While Brother Bear and Sister Bear and their friends carefully follow the clues, Father Bear constantly jumps to the wrong conclusions. Full of excitement and surprises, The Bear Detectives will have young mystery lovers eager to put on their detective hats and read along. Beginner Books are fun, funny, and easy to read! Launched by Dr. Seuss in 1957 with the publication of The Cat in the Hat, this beloved early reader series motivates children to read on their own by using simple words with illustrations that give clues to their meaning. Featuring a combination of kid appeal, supportive vocabulary, and bright, cheerful art, Beginner Books will encourage a love of reading in children ages 3–7.

Why do so many Americans drive for miles each autumn to buy a vegetable that they are unlikely to eat? While most people around the world eat pumpkin throughout the year, North Americans reserve it for holiday pies and other desserts that celebrate the harvest season and the rural past. They decorate their houses with pumpkins every autumn and welcome Halloween trick-or-treaters with elaborately carved jack-o'-lanterns. Towns hold annual pumpkin festivals featuring giant pumpkins and carving contests, even though few have any historic ties to the crop. In this fascinating cultural and natural history, Cindy Ott tells the story of the pumpkin. Beginning with the myth of the first Thanksgiving, she shows how Americans have used the pumpkin to fulfull their desire to maintain connections to nature and to the family farm of lore, and, ironically, how small farms and rural communities have been revitalized in the process. And while the pumpkin has inspired American myths and traditions, the pumpkin itself has changed because of the ways people have perceived, valued, and used it. Pumpkin is a smart and lively study of the deep meanings hidden in common things and their power to make profound changes in the world around us.

Join Mouse from If You Give a Mouse a Cookie as he decorates all the pumpkins in the patch in this sweet board book from Laura Numeroff and Felicia Bond. Mouse is excited for fall because that means it is time to decorate pumpkins! But one is missing. Where could it have gone? This is the perfect Halloween book for the very youngest reader, and is just the right book to get kids and budding artists inspired to work on their own Halloween crafts.

Desperately in search of your stolen bicycle? Has your cat gone mysteriously missing? Meet Samantha "Sam" Green, Briarton's most precocious private eye. She may be only ten years old, but that's not stopping her from figuring out some very vexing mysteries. Be it a slinking shadow in the night or a pesky vandal on the prowl, Sam has a flair for cracking the toughest case wide open--and getting herself grounded along the way. With Halloween one week away, a mystery comes knocking at Samantha Green's door in the form of scary Mrs. Finkel, Briarton's new librarian and suspected witch. When Mrs. Finkel asks for Sam's help to investigate haunting pumpkin deliveries and "noises that vanish," Sam is terrified, but her curious nature just can't resist the challenge. With the help of her best friend, Brian; favorite babysitter, Jenn; and trusty yellow Lab, Murphy, Sam delves into the baffling and downright spooky case. Soon, she is full-tilt into her investigation of the haunting, unexplainable events occurring at Mrs. Finkel's house, from the mounting pile of pumpkins left on her doorstep to menacing notes attempting to run her out of town. As Sam chases the trail of clues, she uncovers yet another mystery--that of Mrs. Finkel herself!

As the townsfolk sleep, something creeps into the neighborhood. Hidden in the shadows, its presence is as old as time itself, its intent not born of goodness. Nick, a teenager who fancies himself a detective, wakes to find his carved masterpiece missing. Now a mystery is afoot and Nick has his first assignment, to find out who or what is snatching up the town's pumpkins and why. Unfortunately, as with all great detectives, obstacles stand in Nick's way—the neighborhood bully and his cronies and the strange old lady and her dog who share the run-down house at the end of Nick's block. As Nick investigates, an urban legend unravels . . . the legend of the Pumpkin Thief. Nick fears the legend as he embarks on the most dangerous adventure of his young life. Collecting clues, getting ever closer to the true nature of evil, he learns that curiosity comes with a high price.

Differentiating requires more than just a simple bag of tricks. Teachers need to have concrete strategies if they want to provide choice and challenge for all learners in their classroom. The strategies included in this book were chosen based on their ease of implementation and modification. In addition, they all encourage student engagement, provide inherent opportunities for differentiation, and are appropriate for multiple grade levels. Differentiation That Really Works provides time-saving strategies and lesson ideas created and field-tested by practicing professionals in their own heterogeneous classrooms. These lessons can be used as written or can be modified to meet the needs of a particular classroom. The book also provides templates that can be used to develop new lessons using each strategy. These strategies, including exit cards, choice boards, cubing, graphic organizers, learning contracts, and tiered lessons, help pave the way to a differentiated classroom that meets all students' needs! Grades K-2

Looking for tried and true ways to capture the attention of your three-year-olds? This comprehensive collection of over 600 teacher-created activities provides hours of fun and interesting activities perfectly tailored for this age group. Discover new ways to use everyday items to create fresh, exciting art projects; learn new classroom management techniques from experienced teachers; and find helpful tips for working with three-year-olds.

Preliminary Material -- Acknowledgements -- Authors' Note -- Introduction -- Politics, Poetics, Film: The Beginnings of a Collaboration -- Parallel Texts: Language into Image in The Goalkeeper's Fear of the Penalty -- Accompanied by Text: From Short Letter, Long Farewell to Alice in the Cities -- Mute Stories and Blind Alleys: Text, Image and Allusion in Wrong Move -- Leafing through Wings of Desire -- Conclusion -- Filmographies -- Bibliography -- Index.

Fruitvale is getting ready for its first ever April Fool's Day Festival, but there's a lot more than pranks going on this April Fool's Day though. Townsfolk discover frogs in the strangest places: shoes, hats, even the Calendar Club Help Box! And a gowk goes missing, too! But what is a gowk?