Kate Banks

When Max cuts out words from magazines and newspapers, collecting them the way his brothers collect stamps and coins, they all learn about words, sentences, and storytelling.

When Max and Pete get a new dog, they learn that taking care of a pet is not as easy as they thought.

A boy provides instructions as he searches high and low for an elephant, which the reader can find in the illustrations.

After his owner dies, a cat wanders across the countryside of France, unable to forget the home he had in the stone house by the edge of the sea.

When its owners leave, a summer house comes alive with the sounds of a mouse nibbling crumbs in the fall, a cat taking shelter in the winter, and rain falling on the roof in the spring.

Alex wants to be a "night worker" like his father who goes to work at a construction site after Alex goes to bed.

At the end of the day a little boy falls asleep as his mama reads about a bear hibernating.

"While his family readies his townhouse for an approaching storm, boarding up windows and laying in groceries, Noah heads to the back garden, where beetles are burrowing deeper into the bark and mice are stuffing their hole with moss. Quickly and efficiently, Noah sets to work building an ark for them and other backyard creatures - salamanders and toads, snakes and spiders, even brightly colored hummingbirds. Setting out fistfuls of nuts and leaves,...

Third-grader Howie Bowles copes with having to change schools twice in one year by pretending to be a secret agent named Agent Bean Burger.

When sixteen-year-old Baz becomes apprentice to a powerful but kind magician, he makes a long journey across the desert and into the mountains, ultimately discovering himself by learning to dispel illusions.