Laura Hamilton

Tugs Esther Button was born to a luckless family. Buttons don't presume to be singers or dancers. They aren't athletes or artists, good listeners, or model citizens. The one time a Button ever made the late Goodhue Gazette - before Harvey Moore came along with his talk of launching a new paper - was when Great Grandaddy Ike accidentally set Town Hall ablaze. Tomboy Tugs looks at her hapless family and sees her own reflection looking back until she...

Keleios the Half-Elf was but five years old when she saw her mother murdered by the evil witch Harque. For years she has asked the gods for the strength she'll need to avenge this foul death, and it seems the gods have answered her. She's been granted an array of powers never before seen in one person, but she has also acquired a most terrifying burden, a demonmark. This mark can open the door to undreamed abilities, but it can also open her soul...

Faced with the difficulties of growing up and choosing a religion, a twelve-year-old girl talks over her problems with her own private God.

When her teacher announces that he is getting married, Lilly the mouse sets her heart on being the flower girl at his wedding.

Lilly loves school, and she especially loves her teacher, Mr. Slinger. When Lilly gets a purple plastic purse and brings it to school, she wants to show it to everyone. Mr. Slinger, however, makes her wait to show the purse, and Lilly gets mad. What she does to Mr. Slinger – and how she makes up for her actions later – show Lilly at her funniest and most creative. A Live Oak Media audio production.

Andrew wants freckles so badly that he buys Sharon's freckle recipe for fifty cents.

Big sister Lilly (star of Lilly's Purple Plastic Purse) thought it might be fun to have a new baby in the family. But jealousy takes over and her efforts to alienate her oblivious baby brother are both hysterically funny and ultimately comforting for siblings with similar feeling of resentment. A Live Oak Media audio production.

It's Winnie's first time at camp and she loves it; but in a misguided effort to make new friends, she tells her tent mates that her mother, who died soon after she was born, is a famous artist. One lie leads to another until her friends from home overhear her, and her father shows up unexpectedly for a visit. The challenges of camp life and making new friends is convincingly explored in this second chapter book in the delightful Winnie series.

Eight-year-old Winnie and her two best friends Vanessa and Zoe, do everything together - until the two girls want to take up ballet and Winnie would rather continue their library-visit day. To preserve the friendship, Winnie tries to dance - and fails miserably. When she drops out, her friendships suffer. With help from her supportive Dad, Winnie resolves to try again, and all three girls learn that they can have different interests and still be friends....

Chef Alice Waters has always been friends with food. The search for good food led Alice Waters to France, and then back to Berkeley, California, where she started Chez Panisse restaurant and the Edible Schoolyard. For Alice, a delicious meal does not start in the kitchen, but in the fields with good soil and caring farmers. Jacqueline Briggs Martin, author of the Caldecott winner, Snowflake Bentley, teams up with Hayelin Choi, making her illustration...