Book 1: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, better known and loved today as simply The Wizard of Oz, is a tale that has been cherished by readers and listeners throughout the years. This timeless story has inspired Broadway shows, cartoon series, and many films over the past few generations. I hope that this book has inspired your sense of creativity and wonder as much as it has mine.

Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior and a fervent love of stories and practices not only his native Hinduism but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is 16, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat, his only companions a hyena, an orangutan, a wounded zebra, and Richard Parker, a 450 pound Bengal tiger.

Whatever You Do, Don't Run is a hilarious collection of true tales from top ­safari guide Peter Allison. In a place where the wrong behavior could get you eaten, Allison has survived face-to-face encounters with big cats, angry ­elephants, and the world's most unpredictable animals: herds of untamed tourists and foolhardy guides whose outrageous antics sometimes make them even more dangerous than a pride of hungry lions!

Since its publication in 1952, Charlotte's Web has become one of America's best-loved children's books. For fifty years, this timeless story of the pig named Wilbur and the wise spider named Charlotte who saved him has continued to warm the hearts of readers everywhere. This 1953 Newbery Honor Book comes to life in a delightful unabridged recording, read lovingly by the author himself.

Ivan is an easygoing gorilla. Living at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, he has grown accustomed to humans watching him through the glass walls of his domain. He rarely misses his life in the jungle. In fact, he hardly ever thinks about it at all. Instead, Ivan thinks about TV shows he's seen and about his friends Stella, an elderly elephant, and Bob, a stray dog. But mostly Ivan thinks about art and how to capture the taste of a mango or the sound of leaves with color and a well-placed line.

Can a robot survive in the wilderness? When robot Roz opens her eyes for the first time, she discovers that she is alone on a remote, wild island. She has no idea how she got there or what her purpose is - but she knows she needs to survive. After battling a violent storm and escaping a vicious bear attack, she realizes that her only hope for survival is to adapt to her surroundings and learn from the island's unwelcoming animal inhabitants. As Roz slowly befriends the animals, the island starts to feel like home - until, one day, the robot's mysterious past comes back to haunt her.

Storm is born into a world of secrets - an island no one visits, names no one will say, and deaths that no one will talk about. The answers are locked in his species' troubled past, guarded by the fierce creasia cats. But when Storm's friends are threatened, he decides that he must act, pitting himself against the creasia to show that they can be resisted and outwitted. To prove his point, he must stay one step ahead of clever hunters, who have more to lose than Storm imagines.

Author and painter Mark McGinnis has collected over 40 of these hallowed popular tales and retold them in vividly poetic yet accessible language, their original Buddhist messages firmly intact.

For the past several years, on a farm north of San Francisco, the celebrated writer Alice Walker has diligently cared for a flock of chickens. Over time, her blossoming relationship with “her girls” became a source of inspiration, strength, and spiritual discovery, and helped Walker connect more profoundly with her own past as a girl in rural Georgia. Walker has recorded this journey in The Chicken Chronicles, an extraordinary document of personal discovery, political commitment, and the joys of relating to animals.

Brilliantly weaving together original research, lovable characters and a dynamic, thoroughly engaging plot, The Wolf Chronicles is an adventure story in the tradition of Clan of the Cave Bear and Watership Down. Promise of the Wolves is the first title in The Wolf Chronicles trilogy.

The ancient prophecy speaks of the five, those who will come to save all of dragonkind. Like most prophecies, it leaves out a lot of the important details. The very ordinary elf girl who runs for the hills - and gets lost in a forest instead. The dragon egg, precariously perched high in a tree on a dark winter's night. And what happens when egg meets girl.

Young Tepary Jones leads a life of constant adventure. But he gets more excitement than even he can handle when he plays a flute he finds in an ancient ruin. Magic from the Distant Time changes him into a bushy-tailed woodrat and ensnares him in a world of danger and suspense. His parents don’t realize what’s happened to him - only his dog Dusty knows. With Dusty alone to protect him from nightly predators, Tepary must unravel the mystery behind the owner of the flute - Kokopelli himself.

Drawn by an online post, Tom Ryan adopted Will, a frightened, deaf, and mostly blind elderly dog, and brought him home to live with him and Atticus. The only owners Will ever knew had grown too fragile to take care of themselves or of him. Ultimately Will was left at a kill shelter in New Jersey. Tom hoped to give Will a place to die with dignity amid the rustic beauty of the White Mountains of his New Hampshire home. But when Will bites him numerous times and acts out in violent displays, Tom realizes he is in for a challenge.

Walter Wangerin's profound fantasy concerns a time when the sun turned around the earth and the animals could speak, when Chauntecleer the Rooster ruled over a more or less peaceful kingdom. What the animals did not know was that they were the Keepers of Wyrm, monster of evil long imprisoned beneath the earth ... and Wyrm, sub terra, was breaking free.

A series of robberies has disrupted the peaceful life at the Bean Farm. First, food disappears from The First Animal Bank. Then sheets and shirts vanish from a clothesline. By the time oats are stolen from the barn, everyone is suspicious and upset. Soon, the animals even suspect Freddy! Who, or what, is responsible for the crimes? What is the mysterious white shape in the Great Woods?

The squirrels Jed, TsTs, and Chai are the very best of friends. So when Jed is snatched up by a hawk and carried away to another realm, TsTs and Chai resolve to go after him. New communities are discovered, new friends are made, huge danger is encountered (both man-made and of the fox and bobcat variety) and mysteries are revealed. Nuts to You is wholly original, funny, lively, and thought-provoking.

Bambi is the beloved story of a young deer’s early years and coming of age in a forest with many dangers. Because deer are prey for humans, Bambi is taught from a young age about the dangers he will face and warned to always be cautious. He, and all the other creatures in the forest, fear humans.

This is the story of a hen named Sprout. No longer content to lay eggs on command only to have them carted off to the market, she glimpses her future every morning through the barn doors, where the other animals roam free, and comes up with a plan to escape into the wild - and to hatch an egg of her own. An anthem for individuality and motherhood, The Hen Who Dreamed She Could Fly has captivated millions of fans in Korea, where it is a contemporary classic. Now the novel is making its way around the world.

Fiver could sense danger. Something terrible was going to happen to the warren; he felt sure of it. They had to leave immediately. So begins a long and perilous journey of survival for a small band of rabbits. As the rabbits skirt danger at every turn, we become acquainted with the band, its humorous characters, and its compelling culture, complete with its own folk history and mythos. Fiver’s vision finally leads them to Watership Down, an upland meadow. But here they face their most difficult challenges of all.

Dar Oakley - the first Crow in all of history with a name of his own - was born two thousand years ago. When a man learns his language, Dar finally gets the chance to tell his story. He begins his tale as a young man, and how he went down to the human underworld and got hold of the immortality meant for humans, long before Julius Caesar came into the Celtic lands; how he sailed West to America with the Irish monks searching for the Paradise of the Saints; and how he continuously went down into the land of the dead and returned.

For centuries, children and adults have treasured the stories handed down by Aesop, a slave who lived in ancient Greece approximately six centuries B.C. Known for their charm and simplicity, these simple tales feature brief adventures of animals, birds, and beasts - with a message hidden in each narrative. Every child should meet up with "The Hare and the Tortoise", "The Ants and the Grasshopper", "The Goose and the Golden Egg", "The Wolf in Sheep's Clothing", and other characters.

Farthing Wood is being bulldozed and a drought means the animals no longer have anywhere to live or drink. Fox, Badger, Toad, Tawny Owl, Mole and the other animals band together and leave their ancestral home and set off to move to a far-away nature reserve. Their journey is full of adventure and fraught with disasters: a fire, a storm, a treacherous river crossing and a hunt. The animals must unite in adversity and in doing so they learn about each other’s habits and limitations.

Eleven-year-old Nikolas - nicknamed "Christmas" - has received only one toy in his life: a doll carved out of a turnip. But he's happy with his turnip doll, because it came from his parents, who love him. Then one day his father goes missing, and Nikolas must travel to the North Pole to save him. Along the way Nikolas befriends a surly reindeer, bests a troublesome troll, and discovers a hidden world of enchantment in the frozen village of Elfhelm.

Abandoned in the jungle of the Nepalese Borderlands, two-year-old Nandu is found living under the protective watch of a pack of wild dogs. From his mysterious beginnings, fate delivers him to the king's elephant stable, where he is raised by unlikely parents - the wise head of the stable, Subba-sahib, and Devi Kali, a fierce and affectionate female elephant. When the king's government threatens to close the stable, Nandu, now 12, searches for a way to save his family and community. A risky plan could be the answer.

Discover Haroun and the Sea of Stories, Salman Rushdie's classic fantasy novel. Set in an exotic eastern landscape peopled by magicians and fantastic talking animals, Salman Rushdie's classic children's novel Haroun and the Sea of Stories inhabits the same imaginative space as The Lord of the Rings, The Alchemist, and The Wizard of Oz.

Blackstone Audiobooks presents, from the unabridged collection A.A. Milne's Pooh Classics, the 44 poems and verses from When We Were Very Young performed by Peter Dennis. This is the only reading of these delightful verses authorized by A.A. Milne's son, Christopher Robin.

It's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it. Guts, glory, danger, and sacrifice are all in a day's work for Hank the Cowdog, Head of Ranch Security. While investigating a murder on the ranch, Hank finds himself the number-one suspect.

Walter Wangerin's profound fantasy concerns a time when the sun turned around the earth and the animals could speak, when Chauntecleer the Rooster ruled over a more or less peaceful kingdom. What the animals did not know was that they were the Keepers of Wyrm, monster of evil long imprisoned beneath the earth ... and Wyrm, sub terra, was breaking free.

Book 1: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, better known and loved today as simply The Wizard of Oz, is a tale that has been cherished by readers and listeners throughout the years. This timeless story has inspired Broadway shows, cartoon series, and many films over the past few generations. I hope that this book has inspired your sense of creativity and wonder as much as it has mine.

High in the mountains, deep in the safety of a cave, a brood of dragons is born. The four young ones are among the last of a dying breed---the final hope for dragons' survival. But hope shatters when a murderous group of slave-trading dwarves breaks into the cave, leaving death and destruction in its wake. Only young Auron, a rare scaleless gray dragon, manages to escape.