Growing Farm

After her best friend, Annie, leaves for a fancy camp in New Hampshire, Ivy can’t imagine how she’s going to endure the long, hot Nevada summer with no one around but that pain-in-the-neck Billy Joe Butterworth next door and all those melancholy visitors to the Red Star Guest Ranch. Happily, an answer comes to Ivy in a flash of honey-colored topaz, and she cleverly hires herself out to take care of people’s farm animals or pets while they’re away. So begins a summer of discovery for tenderhearted but sensible Ivy....

The Bed and Biscuit animal boardinghouse has gone wild! Grampa Bender is temporarily caring for a wounded Canada goose, a cranky old muskrat, and two starving fox kits. Luckily Ernest, Grampa’s capable mini-pig, is there to encourage the other animals to be good hosts. But the visiting creatures are wild, not tame, and they all just want to go home! Despite the chaos, Ernest also takes on the training of Sir Walter the Scottie, the newest addition to Grampa’s blended animal family.

La Paz is a happy but noisy village. A little peace and quiet would make it just right. So the villagers elect the bossy Don Pepe as their mayor. Before long, singing of any kind is outlawed. But there is one noisy rooster who does what roosters are born to do - he sings!

On a crisp fall day, Mem and Grandpa go to Josie's Farm Stand, where they find vegetables, flowers, and a furry friend.

It's Valentine's Day, and on the farm that means a Valentine's party. Little Duck is wildly excited. She hangs balloons, streamers, sparkling lights, and hearts everywhere, and she hand-makes a valentine for everyone. On top of a hill, a little fox hears the music from the party and follows Little Duck's many decorations to the barn...but foxes are not at all welcome on farms. The chickens stop dancing. The sheep stop dancing. The pigs stop dancing. The mice hustle off to hide. Will Little Fox ruin the dance?

When Grampa's friend drops off his chicken, Malicia, at the Bed and Biscuit for a well-earned vacation, Ernest the mini-pig is determined to put aside his dislike for chickens and be a good host. But Malicia is no ordinary chicken: she’s magic! And she seems determined to use her magic to make the animals miserable. Together with Gabby the mynah bird, Milly the cat, and Sir Walter the Scottish terrier, Ernest must figure out a way to get Grampa to see how awful Malicia really is - before she does something truly terrible!

Living on a small Idaho vegetable farm, Paige’s family has faced tough times before, but a year after the loss of her father, her mom is overwhelmed by the financial challenges and reluctantly agrees to sell the farm. However, when a realtor pounds the “For Sale” sign into the family’s front yard, the reality (and finality) of it is almost too much to bear. Paige is determined to do whatever it takes to save her father’s farm, which has been in their family for generations.

There's more trouble on the farm, but Duck has nothing to do with it, for once. This time the trouble is a four-ounce puff of fluff who just won't go to sleep, and whose play-with-me peeps are keeping the whole barnyard awake with him. How do you get a baby duck to hit the hay? Poor Farmer Brown will find out - and Duck might just find himself in trouble after all.

Charlie the Ranch Dog may have met his match in Mr. Rabbit, a sneaky ranch animal that steals from Mama's garden. Charlie tries to think up ways to stop the rabbit from eating up all the yummy carrots, but Mr. Rabbit always seems to be one step ahead!

Everything is changing for Becket Branch. From subways to sidewalks to safety rules, Becket is a city kid born and raised. Now, the Branch family is trading urban bustle for big green fields and moving to Gran's farm, where Becket has to make sense of new routines from feeding animals to baling hay. And as much as Becket loves to yell "Beautiful Alert!", there's a lot about the countryside that is just plain odd.

When Sunita joins Dr. Gabe and another Vet Volunteer on a house call at a local horse farm, she is concerned to discover a lone lamb housed in one of the stalls. She knows that sheep are flock animals, and that without other sheep and lambs around, this little lamb will not thrive. Can she and her fellow Vet Volunteers help educate the owner, and find a new home for it with others of its kind?

It sure is nice to be King of the Ranch. Just ask Charlie! His days are filled with belly rubs, bacon, and Mama's special tender loving care. But then his daily routine is interrupted when a new baby shows up! All of a sudden, everyone's attention is on her, and not on Charlie. They tuck her in, feed her dinner, and give her their tender loving care. What is a ranch dog to do?

It’s lambing season at Oak Tree Farm! When a little lamb loses his mother, Jasmine names him Lucky and steps in to bottle-feed him and patiently help him learn to walk. With a sheepdog to train and two helpless baby birds to raise, it’s hard work for Jasmine to juggle all of her animals, even with the help of her best friend, Tom. But when sheep rustlers strike her family’s flock, taking Lucky with them, Jasmine will have to summon the courage for her most daring rescue yet.

When Jasmine and her best friend, Tom, visit their neighbor Mr. Hobson to help him with some chores, they discover that he is selling his farm and moving to a nearby assisted living facility. Because Mr. Hobson won’t have a home for his beloved donkey, Mistletoe, anymore, he is planning to send him to a faraway sanctuary. Jasmine doesn’t want to see them separated, so she hatches a plan to keep Mistletoe at Oak Tree Farm, where Mr. Hobson could visit him whenever he liked.

Chickie Jurin, a ten-year-old school misfit, wants to be the chicken expert of the world. When her family inherits a Montana ranch, she is thrilled to leave town and have a chicken coop she can call her own. Not everyone in her family is excited to live in the middle of nowhere, though. “Mom stepped into the kitchen for a closer look. Her face fell. The stove was crammed with bubbling pots and spattered with grease. The kitchen was a disaster.” Chickie’s career-minded mother and her siblings: know-it-all Kate, feather-pulling Tom, and perfect Steven, prefer life in town. Will gallons ...

Ballet Cat and her cousin Goat are preparing a show for Grandma. Each is trying to outdo the other - Ballet Cat with an elaborate dance routine (of course) and Goat with his amazing (amazingly lame, that is) magic tricks. Neither act goes off quite as planned, but it doesn't matter...because Grandma falls asleep during the performance! Oh well. At least Ballet Cat and Goat learn how to cooperate. (But Ballet Cat cooperates better!)

Having even more colorful photos than the first audiobook edition, Griselda the Toulouse Goose is about being celebrated, not just tolerated. It explores how one can feel when they are excluded and also offers hope for anyone who has ever felt left out. In Griselda’s case, she is ignored by a group of geese who are supposed to embrace her, but winds up expanding her territory because of it. Looking back on things, she isn’t bitter, and even wishes them well. She learns that the recipe for success often begins with disaster, that her future can rewrite her past....

Grandpa drives a milk truck. For the first time, he takes his grandson along to the farms to collect the milk, and the plant where the milk is bottled and made into ice cream.

Grampa Bender couldn’t run the Bed and Biscuit animal boardinghouse without the help of Ernest the mini-pig, Gabby the Vietnamese mynah bird, and his young cat, Milly. These three animals think of themselves as Grampa’s family, and they have always assumed he felt the same way.

Somewhere a bee makes a bed in a rose, because the bee knows day has come to a close. Nighttime blankets a little farm. An owl who-hoots. A bear curls up in a log. A mother fox calls her pups home to the den. But animals aren't the only ones preparing to rest.