Family Life Science

Ten-year-old Lola has always been touched by magic. In her Mexico City home, built around a towering tree, she is accustomed to enchanted blooms that change with the seasons, a sandbox that spits out mysterious treasures, and mischievous chaneques that scuttle about unseen by all but her. Magic has always been a part of her life, but now she must embrace the extraordinary as never before. Ever since The Thing That Happened, Lola's brother Alex has been sick. As his condition worsens, something begins eating away at the tree, causing its leaves and blossoms to crumble like ash.

The Recovery of Family Life defends marriage and family life while exposing the limits and blind spots in these powerful revolutionary ideologies. After suggesting a general framework within which to understand the ends and means of family policy, Scott Yenor explores what a liberal society should seek to accomplish in marriage and family policy.

America’s high divorce rate is well known, but little attention has been paid to the flip side: couples who creatively (sometimes clandestinely) manage to build marriages that last longer than we ever thought possible. What’s the secret? To find out, best-selling journalist Iris Krasnow interviewed more than 200 wives whose marriages have survived for 15-70 years.

Kate and her younger brother, Tom, lead dull, uninteresting lives. And if their dull, uninteresting parents are anything to go by, they don't have much to look forward to. Why can't Kate have thrilling adventures and save the world the way people do in books? Even her 11th birthday is shaping up to be mundane - that is, until her mysterious and highly irresponsible Uncle Herbert, whom she's never even met before, surprises her with the most unexpected, exhilarating, inappropriate birthday present of all time: a colossal steam locomotive called the Silver Arrow.

When the storied Staff of Moses - responsible for summoning the plagues of ancient Egypt - vanishes from the museum in Perilous Falls, Will Wilder is suspect number one. Desperate to prove his innocence and stop the thief from unleashing terrors upon the town of Perilous Falls, Will must use his supernatural gift to locate the beast - but it's nowhere to be found.

It’s springtime at Winterhouse, and Elizabeth is settling into the joyful chaos of her new home. But it isn’t long before she and Freddy are drawn into an ominous new mystery. Guests at the hotel start behaving oddly, and Elizabeth’s powers manifest in thrilling - sometimes frightening - new ways. As unnatural tremors shake the foundations of Winterhouse, Elizabeth hears cries for help from Gracella Winters, a villain she’d thought dead and gone for good.

The three Oakenfeld children, Susan, Charles, and Murray, are perplexed. Their parents aren't letting them turn on the television. Something strange is going on in the city, that's for sure. And now Mom and Dad are sending them off to Canada to stay with their Uncle Farley - who they've never even met! New York-based author and teacher Dale Peck was inspired to write this amazing story after the events of September 11, 2001.

A young girl's midnight séance awakens a long-slumbering malevolent spirit… A band of runaway orphans allies with an underground collective of saboteurs and plans a daring rescue of their friends, imprisoned in the belly of an industrial wasteland… Two old friends draw closer to their goal of bringing together a pair of exiled toy makers in order to reanimate a mechanical boy prince… As the fate of Wildwood hangs in the balance.

Aria Blue seems like an ordinary 12-year-old. She loves music, and colorful shoelaces, and taste-testing various types of cookies. But there is much more to Aria than meets the eye. She can use her shadow like a door to travel from place to place. She can dream things into existence. And she can see when certain people need help. Because Aria is a guardian angel. Her mission? To find and guide three different girls - Gabby, Caroline, and Mikayla - through their different problems. If she succeeds, Aria will earn her wings.

While exploring her new home, a young girl named Coraline unlocks a door to reveal a hidden passage. Intrigued, she ventures deep into a mysterious mirror realm, a world eerily similar yet darkly different from her own. There another mother and another father greet her, and they want her to stay and be their little girl. They want to change her and never let her go.

Inspired by Pixar Animation Studios' latest film, Coco, this middle grade novel will retell the story of the film as well as feature original content expanding upon its rich, vibrant world and characters.

"Talk about out of the frying pan, into the fire! I was pretty sure that my freaky stepsister and that freaky field guide of hers would ruin my life. But now it looks like they're going to ruin all of Florida, too! Okay, maybe that's not fair. Maybe all these stupid giants would be waking up anyway, but if it wasn't for her and that book, I'd be home playing video games and this would be someone else's giant problem!"

Tenacity in Children examines how multiple generations of parents and caregivers raised children to become successful adults. Until relatively recent times in human history, there were no schools or organized institutions, nor were there parenting books. Rather, caregivers depended on the seven important instincts that evolved across tens of thousands of years in the human species.

Achim is 11 years old when he moves from the orphanage to the house by the sea. Here everything is strange and new. But one day he discovers an unusual door that leads to a circular room with walls made of rough stone. The light coming through the window is hazy, as if the room is under water. It is a magic room - which he calls “The Adopted Room” - belonging to another world. And on a bed in the room sits a boy who is waiting to take Achim with him into the realm of the powerful Nameless One.

Even after rescuing the king from deadly Snuffweasels, Zarf is scum on the bottom rung of the middle-school social ladder. After all, he is still a troll. But at least he still has his two best friends, Kevin and Chester...until Kevin disappears, that is. Now Zarf is at an all-time low. It seems a band of wolves are seeking revenge for the constant disgrace they've suffered over the years, and Little Red Ridinghood's kid might be next on their list.

Georgie McCool knows her marriage is in trouble. That it's been in trouble for a long time. She still loves her husband, Neal, and Neal still loves her, deeply-but that almost seems beside the point now. Maybe that was always beside the point. Two days before they're supposed to visit Neal's family in Omaha for Christmas, Georgie tells Neal that she can't go. She's a TV writer, and something's come up on her show; she has to stay in Los Angeles.

Kiranmala must leave the Kingdom Beyond and travel to her hometown of Parsippany to save Prince Lal, who has been spirited to the unlikeliest of places - a tree in the yard of her best-enemy-for-life. She also faces evil serpents (of course!), plus a frightening prophecy about her role in the coming conflict between good and evil. Most troubling of all, though, is the way reality all around her seems to waver and flicker at odd moments.

Nobel Peace Prize winner and New York Times best-selling author Malala Yousafzai introduces some of the people behind the statistics and news stories we read or hear every day about the millions of people displaced worldwide.

Fourteen-year-old Ozzy lives near Portland, Oregon, and is desperate for help. His scientist parents have been kidnapped after discovering a formula that enables mind control. Their work was so top secret that Ozzy is afraid to go to the police, but without help, he fears he'll never find his parents. Then he stumbles across a classified ad in the local newspaper that says "Wizard for Hire. Call 555-SPEL." Ozzy has read about wizards in books like Harry Potter, but wizards couldn't exist today, could they? After Ozzy meets the wizard Labyrinth - a.k.a. Rin - he's even more skeptical.

Christmas has come, and with it a sparkling white winterfrost over the countryside. But twelve-year-old Bettina's parents have been called away unexpectedly, leaving her in charge of the house, the farm, and baby Pia. In all the confusion, Bettina's family neglects to set out the traditional bowl of Christmas rice pudding for the tiny nisse who are rumored to look after the family and their livestock.