Growing Library

Highlights Friendship Stories collection combines fiction and nonfiction friendship-themed audio stories, perfect for engaging young listeners.

It's been almost a year since Cyrus and Antigone Smith earned their places as Journeymen at Ashtown, home of an ancient order of explorers that has long guarded the world's secrets and treasures. While their studies go well, Cy and Tigs are not well liked since losing the Dragon's Tooth to the nefarious Dr. Phoenix. The Tooth is the only object in the world capable of killing the long-lived transmortals, and Phoenix has been tracking them down one-by-one, and murdering them.

Delsie loves tracking the weather - lately, though, it seems the squalls are in her own life. She's always lived with her kindhearted Grammy, but now, she's looking at their life with new eyes and wishing she could have a "regular family". Delsie observes other changes in the air, too - the most painful being a friend who's outgrown her. Luckily, she has neighbors with strong shoulders to support her, and Ronan, a new friend who is caring and courageous but also troubled by the losses he's endured.

Hollis Woods has been in so many foster homes she can hardly remember them all. When Hollis is sent to Josie, she'll do everything in her power to make sure they stay together.

The adventures of siblings Kate, Michael, and Emma come to a stunning conclusion when they must find the last Book of Beginning - the Book of Death - before the Dire Magnus does, for when all three books are united, their combined power will be unstoppable.

What if your favorite characters came to life? Billy’s spending the summer in a lakeside cabin that belongs to the mysterious Dr. Libris. But something strange is going on. Besides the security cameras everywhere, there’s Dr. Libris’s private bookcase. Whenever Billy opens the books inside, he can hear sounds coming from the island in the middle of the lake. The clash of swords. The twang of arrows. Sometimes he can even feel the ground shaking. It’s almost as if the stories he’s reading are coming to life! But that’s impossible...isn’t it?

Through a series of fascinating events, Homer's older brother has been illegally sold to the Union Army. It is up to Homer to find him and save him. Along the way, he encounters strange but real people of that era: two tricksters who steal his money, a snake-oil salesman, a hot-air balloonist, and finally, the Maine regiment who saved Little Round Top at the Battle of Gettysburg and won the war for the Union.

No one likes or wants to take the statewide assessment tests. Not the students in Mrs. Woods's sixth-grade class. Not even Mrs. Woods. It's not as if the kids don't already have things to worry about. The whole school is in a frenzy with test time approaching - kids, teachers, the administration. Everyone is anxious. When one of the kids has a big idea for acing the tests, they're all in. But things get ugly before they get better, and, in the end, the real meaning of the perfect score surprises them all.

Until next time. That was chilling promise made to Ollie, Coco and Brian after they outsmarted the smiling man at Mount Hemlock Resort. And as the trio knows, the smiling man always keeps his promises. So when the lights flicker on and off at Brian's family's inn and a boom sounds at the door, there's just one visitor it could be. Only, there's no one there, just a cryptic note left outside signed simply as - S.

Ring in Valentine's Day - and love - with the New York Times best-selling Crayons! This charming title featuring everyone's favorite coloring crew is the perfect gift for that special someone on Valentine's Day - or any day of the year.

The sea, the sea, the sea. It rolled and rolled and called to me. Come in, it said, come in. Thirteen-year-old Sophie is the only girl amongst the crew of The Wanderer, made up of her three uncles and two cousins. They sail across the Atlantic toward England, the land of Bompie, her grandfather. The personal journey she takes brings her deeper into a forgotten past than she ever knew possible. Sophie’s 13-year-old cousin Cody isn’t sure why his father brought him along. Everyone, including his dad, thinks he’s nothing but a knucklehead doofus.

Jeremiah is the world’s biggest baseball fan. He really loves baseball and he knows just about everything there is to know about his favorite sport. So when he’s told he can’t play baseball following an operation on his heart, Jeremiah decides he’ll do the next best thing and become a coach. Hillcrest, where Jeremiah and his father Walt have just moved, is a town known for its championship baseball team. But Jeremiah finds the town caught up in a scandal and about ready to give up on baseball.

Don Freeman's classic character, Corduroy, is even more popular today then he was when he first came on the scene in 1968. This story of a small teddy bear waiting on a department store shelf for a child's friendship has appealed to young fans generation after generation.

For most of her 12 years, Astrid has done everything with her best friend, Nicole. But after Astrid falls in love with roller derby and signs up for derby camp, Nicole decides to go to dance camp instead. And so begins the most difficult summer of Astrid's life as she struggles to keep up with the older girls at camp, hang on to the friend she feels slipping away, and cautiously embark on a new friendship. As the end of summer nears and her first roller derby bout (and junior high!) draws closer, Astrid realizes that maybe she is strong enough to be a roller girl.

Twelve-year-old Ariel Goldberg's life feels like the moment after the final guest leaves the party. Her family's Jewish bakery runs into financial trouble, and her older sister has eloped with a young man from India following the Supreme Court decision that strikes down laws banning interracial marriage. As change becomes Ariel's only constant, she's left to hone something that will be with her always—her own voice.

When classmates Baxter, Abigail, Turner and Emerson are forced to go to the middle of nowhere for a school project, they think things can’t get much worse. Why on earth do they need to learn how to survive in the wilderness by an eccentric instructor? But what starts off as a weekend of team building turns dangerous when their instructor goes missing and they are left with nothing but the pages of a survival handbook to complete a series of challenges.

Told in multiple viewpoints, A Tangle of Knots is a magnificent puzzle. In a slightly magical world where everyone has a Talent, 11-year-old Cady is an orphan with a phenomenal Talent for cake baking. But little does she know that fate has set her on a journey from the moment she was born. And her destiny leads her to a mysterious address that houses a lost luggage emporium, an old recipe, a family of children searching for their own Talents, and a Talent Thief who will alter her life forever. However, these encounters hold the key to Cady's past and how she became an orphan.

Llama Llama is learning lots of new things at school and making many friends. But when Gilroy Goat starts teasing him and some of their classmates, Llama Llama isn't sure what to do. And then he remembers what his teacher told him - walk away and tell someone. It works! But then Llama Llama feels badly. Can he and Gilroy try to be friends again?

Since summer was six years old she lived with dear Aunt May and Uncle Ob. Now, six years later, Aunt May has died. Summer, who misses May with all her might, is afraid something will happen to Ob. Most days Ob seems like he doesn't want to go on. But then Ob feels May's spirit around him and he wants to contact her. Cletus Underwood, a strange boy from school, reads about someone who could help him do that. Summer wants to hear from May too. Ob and Summer don't know what to expect when they set off on their search for some sign from May.

On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany, thanks largely to the efforts of the Hitler Youth, whose organized propaganda marches throughout Germany helped the Nazi Party grow in strength. By 1939, it is estimated that more than seven million boys and girls belonged to the Hitler Youth.