This collection of wonderful stories read by John Lavelle and penned by Marjorie Weinman Sharmat will find a place on any Nate the Great fan's bookshelf.

The Earth Day Fair is days away, but Nate's classroom project - a robot named Mr. Butler - has disappeared. Nate the Great and his dog, Sludge, take on the unusual case, and they are soon searching high and low in and around the school. Will Nate find the robot in time for the fair?

Riddles are a fun way to engage children around this age, while also getting them to learn about different topics and encourage their imagination. With riddles, not only will they improve their listening comprehension, phonetics, and pronunciation, they’ll also gain confidence to answer aloud, without the fear of being wrong.

Mix together an old witch, her magic pasta pot, and a greedy boy. What do you get? Mischief, wild adventure, and a big helping of fun! All the people in the little town of Calabria go to old Strega Nona for solutions to their troubles. From aching heads to broken hearts - Strega Nona can cure them all. But when she hires a lumbering boy named Big Anthony to help her, Strega Nona’s own troubles begin. Award-winning children’s author Tomie dePaola offers an original tale that will have listeners of all ages laughing out loud.

"Hi, I’m Earth! But you can call me Planet Awesome." Prepare to learn all about Earth from the point of view of Earth herself! In this funny yet informative book, filled to the brim with kid-friendly facts, listeners will discover key moments in Earth’s life, from her childhood more than four billion years ago all the way up to present day. Beloved children's book author Stacy McAnulty helps Earth tell her story.

Sy Montgomery's popular 2011 Orion magazine piece, "Deep Intellect", about her friendship with a sensitive, sweet-natured octopus named Athena and the grief she felt at her death, went viral, indicating the widespread fascination with these mysterious, almost alien-like creatures. Since then Sy has practiced true immersion journalism, from New England aquarium tanks to the reefs of French Polynesia and the Gulf of Mexico, pursuing these wild, solitary shape-shifters.

Patrick McDonnell tells the story of the young Jane Goodall and her special childhood toy chimpanzee named Jubilee. As the young Jane observes the natural world around her with wonder, she dreams of "a life living with and helping all animals", until one day she finds that her dream has come true.

Nim lives on an island in the middle of the wide blue sea, shared by only her father, Jack, a marine iguana called Fred, a sea lion called Selkie, a turtle called Chica, and a satellite dish for her e-mail. No one else in the world lives quite like Nim, and she wouldn't swap places with anyone.

"Are you in a bad mood or something?" asked Rocky. "Or something," said Judy Moody. Bad moods, good moods, even back-to-school moods - Judy Moody has them all! When her teacher assigns the class the task of creating "Me" collages, it puts Judy in a cut-and-paste mood! Meet Judy Moody, her little "bother" Stink, her best friend Rocky, and her "pest" friend Frank Pearl. They're guaranteed to put you in a very Judy Moody mood... or something.

When eight-year-old Kirstie brings home a strange egg from the Scottish shore, her family never expects it to hatch. But the next day, Kirstie discovers a baby sea monster swimming in her bathtub! Part horse, part toad, part turtle and part crocodile, he's the oddest-looking creature Kirstie's family has ever seen. Only Kirstie's grandfather knows what the beastie really is: a Water Horse! This lovable creature is the perfect pet. The only trouble is, he can't stop growing.

Jellyfish are an enigma. They have no centralized brain, but they see and feel and react to their environment in complex ways. They look simple, yet their propulsion systems are so advanced that engineers are just learning how to mimic them. They produce some of the deadliest toxins on the planet and still remain undeniably alluring. Long ignored by science, they may be a key to ecosystem stability. Juli Berwald's journey into the world of jellyfish is a personal one.

When Lucy's family moves to an old house on a lake, Lucy tries to see her new home through her camera's lens, as her father has taught her - he's a famous photographer, away on a shoot. Will her photos ever meet his high standards? When she discovers that he's judging a photo contest, Lucy decides to enter anonymously. She wants to find out if her eye for photography is really special - or only good enough. As she seeks out subjects for her photos, Lucy gets to know Nate, the boy next door. But slowly the camera reveals what Nate doesn't want to see....

On the last day of June, my bush pilot left me alone and without food in a wilderness rain forest of Southeast Alaska. He would return in September. For the next 10 weeks my survival would depend on foraging, hunting, and fishing on an island I would share with 1,600 brown bears.

In Dinosaurs Before Dark, adventure is waiting to happen! Jack and his younger sister, Annie, stumble upon a tree house filled with books. Where did the tree house come from? How long has it been there? When Jack reads a book about the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago, and wishes he could really see the pteranodon, it suddenly appears at his window. Magically. Before Jack and Annie can figure out the mystery, the tree house whisks them back to the prehistoric past.

At last - here from the team behind the beloved international best seller comes a companion to Goodnight, Goodnight Construction Site. All of our favorite trucks are back on the construction site - this time with a focus on team-building, friendship, and working together to make a big task seem small!

Before they were the Boxcar Children, Henry, Jessie, Violet, and Benny Alden lived with their parents on Fair Meadow Farm. Although times are hard, the Aldens are happy - “the best family of all,” Mama likes to say. One day, a blizzard hits the countryside, and a traveling family needs shelter. The Aldens take them in, and the strangers soon become friends. But things never stay the same at the farm, and the spring and summer bring events that will forever change their lives.

Wherever the sharks led, Lucy Everhart's marine-biologist mother was sure to follow. She was on a boat far off the coast of Massachusetts, collecting shark data when she died suddenly. Lucy was seven. Since then Lucy and her father have kept their heads above water - thanks in large part to a few close friends and neighbors. But June of her 12th summer brings more than the end of school and a heat wave to sleepy Rockport. On one steamy day, the tide brings a great white - and then another tragedy....

Nim lives on an island in the middle of the wide blue sea, shared by only her father, Jack, a marine iguana called Fred, a sea lion called Selkie, a turtle called Chica, and a satellite dish for her e-mail. No one else in the world lives quite like Nim, and she wouldn't swap places with anyone.

Aref does not want to move to Michigan. He's sure the kids there won't like him. Also, he has everything he needs right where he is! But Sidi has another point of view. Sidi says Aref will go and come back. Just like a falcon or the turtles of Oman, he'll travel far and make his way home to Muscat. So Aref sets out to say good-bye to everything he loves. Good-bye to Mish-Mish, Diram, Sulima, dunes, Sidi…. But how can he stand it?

Raven Kraft has changed the lives of thousands who have run with him - many of them hundreds of times. From all 50 states and dozens of countries, across all age groups and backgrounds, they come to run with Raven, and in the process find friendship, inspiration - and a nickname. Among them is author Laura Lee "White Lightning" Huttenbach, who has logged over 1,000 miles of Raven Runs. Here she explores the stories of dozens of others about why they started running with Raven - and why they keep coming back.

Nebula Award-winning duo Anne McCaffrey and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough add another thrilling chapter to their sweeping Petaybee saga with Changelings. Yana and Sean are beside themselves with joy over the arrival of their twins Ronan and Murel. But the children's shape-changing abilities attract unwanted attention from an off-world scientist. Now Yana and Sean will do anything to protect their precocious youths from danger.

When eight-year-old Kirstie brings home a strange egg from the Scottish shore, her family never expects it to hatch. But the next day, Kirstie discovers a baby sea monster swimming in her bathtub! Part horse, part toad, part turtle and part crocodile, he's the oddest-looking creature Kirstie's family has ever seen. Only Kirstie's grandfather knows what the beastie really is: a Water Horse! This lovable creature is the perfect pet. The only trouble is, he can't stop growing.

Big-wave surfer Garrett McNamara set the world record for the sport, surfing a 78-foot wave in Nazare, Portugal, in 2011, a record he smashed two years later at the same break. Propelled by the challenge and promise of bigger, more difficult waves, this adrenaline-fueled loner and polarizing figure travels the globe to ride the most dangerous swells the oceans have to offer, from calving glaciers to hurricane swells. But what motivates McNamara to go to such extremes - to risk everything for one thrilling ride?

The Log from the Sea of Cortez is the exciting day-by-day account of Steinbeck's trip to the Gulf of California with biologist Ed Ricketts. Drawn from the longer Sea of Cortez, it is a wonderful combination of science, philosophy, and high-spirited adventure.

Written in free verse, Hidden is a compelling tale about an unlikely friendship between two girls. Darra Monson and Wren Abbott first cross paths when Darra’s deadbeat dad is arrested for theft and kidnapping after he steals a car - unaware that Wren was sitting in the back. Years later, the girls - now teens - attend the same summer camp, and are forced to confront the fateful event that changed their lives.

Ten-year-old Jerry Pye wants a dog more than anything. He has a puppy picked out, but someone else wants him, too. Jerry and his sister must hurry to earn enough money to buy him. When they get Ginger home, strange things start to happen. A sneaky stranger in a yellow hat starts following them everywhere. When their precious Ginger disappears on Thanksgiving Day, they start looking for the man in the yellow hat. If they find him, they'll probably find their pup.

Few fish are as beloved, or as obsessed over, as the American shad. Although shad spend most of their lives in salt water, they enter rivers by the hundreds of thousands in the spring and swim upstream heroic distances in order to spawn, then return to the ocean.

What do the lives of Lincoln, Helen Keller, Joan of Arc, and other historical figures have in common with Paula Poundstone? In the hands of this wryly observant and self-deprecating comedian, the answer is outrageously funny and unexpectedly touching. Poundstone compares her crazy life to theirs, as she holds forth on her children, her career, and the time in her life when it appeared she would lose them both.

Winner of a Pura Belpré Award, this middle grade Cuban American coming-of-age novel is inspired by the author's own experience. When Julian's parents make the heartbreaking decision to send him and his two brothers away from Cuba to Miami via the Pedro Pan operation, the boys are thrust into a new world where bullies run rampant and it’s not always clear how best to protect themselves.

In The Summer Book Tove Jansson distills the essence of the summer - its sunlight and storms - into 22 crystalline vignettes. This brief novel tells the story of Sophia, a six-year-old girl awakening to existence, and Sophia's grandmother, nearing the end of hers, as they spend the summer on a tiny unspoiled island in the Gulf of Finland. The grandmother is unsentimental and wise, if a little cranky; Sophia is impetuous and volatile, but she tends to her grandmother with the care of a new parent.