When learning how to write well, there is nothing more powerful than examining the work of the writers we admire. Real writers need mentors - those writers who inspire us and demonstrate through their style and craft how we, too, can be successful writers. In Writing with mentors, Lynne Dorfman and Rose Cappelli, authors of Mentor texts and Nonfiction mentor texts, take us inside two Pennsylvania classrooms and show us how we can use children's literature...

Eight year-old orphan Beth Harmon is quiet, sullen, and by all appearances unremarkable. That is, until she plays her first game of chess. Her senses grow sharper, her thinking clearer, and for the first time in her life she feels herself fully in control. By the age of sixteen, she's competing for the U.S. Open championship. But as Beth hones her skills on the professional circuit, the stakes get higher, her isolation grows more frightening, and...

Presents the story of the good doctor who learned the language of animals and made adventurous voyages. Doctor Dolittle heads for the high seas in perhaps the most amazing adventure ever experienced by man or animal. Told by nine-and-a-half-year-old Tommy Stubbins, crewman and future naturalist, the voyages of Doctor Dolittle and his company lead them to Spidermonkey Island. Along with his faithful friends, Polynesia the parrot and Chee-Chee the...

A little lighthouse on the Hudson River regains its pride when it finds out that it is still useful and has an important job to do.

After the old woman cuts off his tail when he steals her milk, the fox must go through a long series of transactions before she will sew it back on again.

Several animals sleep snugly in Nicki's lost mitten until the bear sneezes. Literature of Delight. It's every child's wish to have all that dough but Brittain's young hero not only feels his wish has been fulfilled, but overkilled, when literally all the money in the world is at his disposal. An exaggerated stomp through fantasyland, to be sure, but brightly funny. Literature of Delight. This is a very funny version of a Ukrainian folktale about...

Miniature people who live in an old country house by borrowing things from the humans are forced to emigrate from their home under the clock. Includes a letter and a sketch of Homily and Arrietty by the author.

A young boy sent on an errand over Hemlock Mountain is not so sure he likes going alone, because there may be bears on the mountain, but with the help of the big iron pot he borrows, he completes his errand.