The high-spirited adventure of young Jai through a magical world offers insights and solutions to many of the problems we currently face-from fear and loss to the tragic absurdity of war and revenge.

Botanica is an island, but almost all of the island is taken up by the Tree. Little knowing how they came to be here, small communities live around the coast line. The Tree provides them shelter, kindling, medicine – and a place of legends, for there are ghosts within the trees who snatch children and the dying. Lillah has come of age and is now ready to leave her community and walk the tree for five years, learning all Botanica has to teach her. Before setting off, Lillah is asked by the dying mother of a young boy to take him with her. In a country where a plague killed half the population, Morace will otherwise be killed in case he has the same disease. But can Lillah keep the boy’s secret, or will she have to resort to breaking the oldest taboo on Botanica? Another astonishingly imaginative novel from the acclaimed author of Slights. FILE UNDER: Fantasy [A Stunning World / An Epic Journey / A Terrifying Secret / Ghosts in the Tree]

This is the adventurous tale of curious emu who changed the lives of emus everywhere when he lost the power of flight to a crafty serpent. However, he discovered his remarkable ability to run. An indigenous animal tale with folkloric elements, this book explains why emus can no longer fly higher than any other bird in Australia.

Acclaimed author Haydon returns with the fourth book in her fantasy series of adventures about Ven Polypheme, Royal Reporter of the magical land of Serendair. Illustrations.

This is an extraordinary book about trees. It's an account by a veteran science journalist that ranges to the limits of scientific understanding: how trees produce aerosols for protection and 'warnings'; the curative effects of 'forest bathing' in Japan; or the impact of trees in fertilizing ocean plankton. There is even science to show that trees are connected to the stars. Trees and forests are far more than just plants: they have myriad functions that help maintain the atmosphere and biosphere. As climate change increases, they will become even more critical to buffer the effects of warmer temperatures, clean our water and air and provide food. If they remain standing. The global forest is also in crisis, and when the oldest trees in the world suddenly start dying - across North America, Europe, the Amazon - it's time to pay attention. At the heart of this remarkable exploration of the power of trees is the amazing story of one man, a shade tree farmer named David Milarch, and his quest to clone the oldest and largest trees - from the California redwoods to the oaks of Ireland - to protect the ancient genetics and use them to reforest the planet.

The Miracle Tree is the fifth book in the series of The Adventures of Harry and Paul. The novel contains deep religious tones with insight and influences of the Lutheran Church in America. It is a humorous, yet poignant and heartwarming novel, based upon the continuing adventures of the author's two famous characters, Harry M. Redmond Junior and his longtime friend, Lutheran Pastor Paul John Henson. Now grown into manhood, The Miracle Tree finds our two friends; deeply involved in their own individual lives, careers, and relationships, but still retaining that special friendship and bond, in which they have enjoyed for many years. In The Miracle Tree, Harry and Paul face their greatest challenge ever. It is a challenge, which shakes the very foundation of their lives, faith, and their own relationship. Already a victim of tragedy when his first wife passed away after a horrific and valiant battle with cancer, when tragedy looms once again, Harry turns to his best friend, now a Lutheran pastor for help. Harry turns to the one person that he believes in more than anyone this side of Heaven in order to perform a miracle. A miracle of faith, a miracle of belief, and a miracle that right now seems impossible. Full of self-doubts, yet committed, and determined, Pastor Paul combines his love for his friend and their families with raw emotion, his deep religious faith, and intense prayer to find the answer and the miracle that they all require. Amongst the triumph and tragedy and the ultimate joy of this remarkable story, the author retains the trademark humor that is consistent with all the Adventures of Harry and Paul, with one of his famous humorous chapters, “The Quest for Peppermint Ice Cream” ranking as one of the author’s top humorous writing moments. To quote the author’s preface for The Miracle Tree, “Those readers who are very religious in their beliefs will interpret The Miracle Tree to be a religious fantasy book. Those readers, who are not religious, will see it in their own way, as a book about simple faith, strange coincidences, trust, and support between close friends, husband and wife, and families. They will see it as a book that displays how people who love and support one another will always survive, no matter what happens. I will leave it to the individual readers to enjoy in their own manner.” Come along on another wonderful Harry and Paul adventure, as told by the master storyteller, Mr. Paul John Hausleben.

Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, is the subject of the sixteenth picture book in the New York Times bestselling series of biographies about heroes. This friendly, fun biography series focuses on the traits that made our heroes great--the traits that kids can aspire to in order to live heroically themselves. Each book tells the story of one of America's icons in a lively, conversational way that works well for the youngest nonfiction readers and that always includes the hero's childhood influences. At the back are an excellent timeline and photos. This volume features Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina Supreme Court Justice. From her home in the Bronx to law school, Sonia Sotomayor was always driven by her love of learning and her commitment to justice. With the support of her loving family and supportive mentors, she pursued a career in law and proved there's no limit to what someone can accomplish.

This was an investigation which would call into question many of Wexford’s assumptions about the way people behave, including his own family. . . In The Babes in the Wood Ruth Rendell brings her keen psychological insight and rigorous moral sense to bear on Wexford’s assumptions about the way people behave, including his own family, as he investigates the mysterious disappearance of two teenagers and their babysitter. There hadn’t been anything in living memory like the kind of rain that had caused the River Brede to burst its banks and flood the homes in the area. The Subaqua Task Force could find no trace of the missing teenagers and their babysitter…but their mother was still convinced that her children were dead.

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Fiction Winner of the William Dean Howells Medal Shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize Over One Year on the New York Times Bestseller List A New York Times Notable Book and a Washington Post, Time, Oprah Magazine, Newsweek, Chicago Tribune, and Kirkus Reviews Best Book of the Year "The best novel ever written about trees, and really just one of the best novels, period." —Ann Patchett The Overstory, winner of the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction, is a sweeping, impassioned work of activism and resistance that is also a stunning evocation of—and paean to—the natural world. From the roots to the crown and back to the seeds, Richard Powers’s twelfth novel unfolds in concentric rings of interlocking fables that range from antebellum New York to the late twentieth-century Timber Wars of the Pacific Northwest and beyond. There is a world alongside ours—vast, slow, interconnected, resourceful, magnificently inventive, and almost invisible to us. This is the story of a handful of people who learn how to see that world and who are drawn up into its unfolding catastrophe.

An intimate look at one majestic hundred-year-old oak tree through four seasons--and the reality of global climate change it reveals. In the life of this one grand oak, we can see for ourselves the results of one hundred years of rapid environmental change. It's leafing out earlier, and dropping its leaves later as the climate warms. Even the inner workings of individual leaves have changed to accommodate more CO2 in our atmosphere. Climate science can seem dense, remote, and abstract. But through the lens of this one tree, it becomes immediate and intimate. In Witness Tree, environmental reporter Lynda V. Mapes takes us through her year living with one red oak at the Harvard Forest. We learn about carbon cycles and leaf physiology, but also experience the seasons as people have for centuries, watching for each new bud, and listening for each new bird and frog call in spring. We savor the cadence of falling autumn leaves, and glory of snow and starry winter nights. Lynda takes us along as she climbs high into the oak's swaying boughs, and scientists core deep into the oak's heartwood, dig into its roots and probe the teeming life of the soil. She brings us eye-level with garter snakes and newts, and alongside the squirrels and jays devouring the oak's acorns. Season by season she reveals the secrets of trees, how they work, and sustain a vast community of lives, including our own. The oak is a living timeline and witness to climate change. While stark in its implications, Witness Tree is a beautiful and lyrical read, rich in detail, sweeps of weather, history, people, and animals. It is a story rooted in hope, beauty, wonder, and the possibility of renewal in people's connection to nature.