A sea-faring girl and her friends take on pirates and grown-ups, and bond with dragons, as they work to make the world a better place, in this spellbinding fantasy by New York Times bestselling author Melissa Marr. Otter (short for Ottilie) is a girl who is most comfortable on her family’s ship, the Tempest, where she and her fathers collect the dragon hides that protect the queen’s guards. But all is not well in the kingdom, and it’s not clear if the queen is to blame. The streets are full of homeless kids, and now one of them, a street-smart boy called London, has stowed away on the Tempest. He befriends Otter, and soon they realize that the fate of the kingdom needs to be in the hands of the kids. For in every tight spot—during pirate attacks and navigating the magical land of the Netherwhere, where they get ship-wrecked—it is the quick-witted kids who save the day. As they work to fight injustice and protect the defenseless, they earn the respect of the realm’s most magical creatures—dragons and gargoyles—who all bond together as a force for good. Melissa Marr spins another fabulous fantasy, centered on family and friends, and introduces readers to the most splendid magical creatures.

Art and family transcend differences in language and culture in this sensitively told, exquisitely illustrated story of a child starting a new school. When Shu Lin starts at her new school, she wears yellow rain boots and a pink coat. At recess, she stands alone in the playground. At lunchtime, she eats by herself from little boxes of brightly colored food. Her classmates aren’t sure what to make of her. But one day, when Shu Lin’s grandpa comes to school to share his amazing artwork, everything changes. With a stunning double-gatefold spread revealing a beautiful Chinese painting, this uplifting story shows the transformative power of art and imagination in developing cultural understanding and empathy.

Sailing to California in 1865, 14-year-old Otter leaves China to meet his father and legendary uncle on the transcontinental railroad, an adventure that challenges his survival on the mountains of the Sierras. Newbery Honor Book

After unsuccessfully searching for love most of her adult life, Gloria, at 60, met Ken King, and finally found the soulmate she had always yearned for. Only twenty-two months later, Ken died of cancer. This is the love story of how Gloria made sense of unexpected love and loss through a journey of metaphysical discovery and reconnection with both Ken and Spirit. Drawing on her eclectic exploration of journaling and dreams, poetry and music, numerology and Runes, sacraments and ceremony, the author reveals the transcendent power of active self-healing, faith in the unseen, and the power of love. Readers of this candid account of the ups and downs of grief will find inspiration to forgive themselves, look inward for hope, and reconnect with departed loved ones on both sides of the veil.

From the fire-breathing beasts of North European myth and legend to the Book of Revelation’s Great Red Dragon of Hell, from those supernatural agencies of imperial authority in ancient China to the so-called dragon-women who threaten male authority, dragons are a global phenomenon, one that has troubled humanity for thousands of years. These often scaly beasts take a wide variety of forms and meanings, but there is one thing they all have in common: our fear of their formidable power and, as a consequence, our need either to overcome, appease, or in some way assume that power as our own. In this fiery cultural history, Martin Arnold asks how these unifying impulses can be explained. Are they owed to our need to impose order on chaos in the form of a dragon-slaying hero? Is it our terror of nature, writ large, unleashed in its most destructive form? Or is the dragon nothing less than an expression of that greatest and most disturbing mystery of all: our mortality? Tracing the history of ideas about dragons from the earliest of times to Game of Thrones, Arnold explores exactly what it might be that calls forth such creatures from the darkest corners of our collective imagination.

Bryana is a little girl taking a long train ride to Liberty City for the annual Fall Festival and a long-awaited reunion with her friend Rabbit, who is...well, a rabbit. Through her letters to Bryana, Rabbit introduces the reader to the overconfident Dragon (who she believes is just a lizard); vain and mean Bonnie Fox; her social diva of a mother; scatterbrained Razzle, the otter; Ricket, the small rat, whose endless desire to fly results in a rocket ride that makes sausages rain down from the sky; and many other characters that make adjusting to life in a new town challenging for a small rabbit. As Rabbit makes friends, she discovers the meaning of community, and learns that diversity is pretty awesome.