Brian Floca

It is the summer of 1869, and trains, crews, and families are traveling together, riding America's brand new transcontinental railroad. The story comes alive with the details of the trip and the sounds, speed, and strength of the mighty locomotives; the work that keeps them moving; and the thrill of travel from plains to mountain to ocean. Come hear the hiss of the steam, feel the heat of the engine, watch the landscape race by. Come ride the rails,...

Five different trucks do five different jobs to get an airplane ready for takeoff.

When her class goes ape on a school visit to the Natural History Museum, a wily teacher tells the tale of a rambunctious former classmate of her own who found himself left behind in the museum after dark.

A hoot owl, Ocax, rules Dimwood Forest and promises to protect the mice as long as they ask his permission to move about. Poppy is a deer mouse under the owl's protection, but when her fiance is killed by Ocax she defies the owl and begins a journey to a new place. Poppy wants to find a place where her family can live away from Ocax, but she has to do it without Ocax catching her.

Feeling neglected on his birthday, Ereth, the cantankerous old porcupine, sets out looking for his favorite treat and instead finds himself acting as "mother" to three young fox kits.

When their home next to a brook is destroyed by beavers, a large family of golden mice is aided by Poppy the deer mouse and her grumpy porcupine friend, who in the process forges a relationship with the son he had abandoned.

When it starts snowing one school day, Max and Mo, the art room hamsters, watch the "Big Ones" outside making snowmen, and they decide to make one too. Includes instructions for making a paper snowflake and snowman.

Asterel races against time to locate a token which will prevent the Kurbs from freezing the city.

"A wolf and bird must fight the starving time and find food, while a human boy learns to hunt"--