New Releases by Lori Haskins Houran

A charming sports story from Jeff Brown''s Flat Stanley for Egmont''s Blue Banana series. When Stanley Lambchop joins the rounders team, he discovers that being flat can help him play. But not everyone thinks flat players should be allowed. You can''t change who you are, though, as Stanley soon discovers . . . Blue bananas are chapter books for children learning to read, suitable for NC Level 2 readers. They are carefully designed educational books for children, supporting their understanding of how to read and develop vocabulary. Blue bananas uses speech bubbles to aid understanding of dialogue and the text encourages children to explore the feelings of characters.

Baby animals and their grown-ups cuddle in their dens, nests, and other dwellings.

Flat Stanley finds him trying out for the baseball team and outwitting the best players until the fairness of his "flat-vantage" is called into question.

Max the duck has a giant case of spring fever, so when Irene goes out for the day and leaves Max in charge, things get a little ... quacky.

See the big jobs that these busy tractors do each day.

Cat after cat makes its way over the fence and into the backyard of a lady who’s looking for a little quiet to enjoy some music. There are slinky cats and stinky cats, gray cats and stray cats, but all the cats have one thing in common—they love to sing. Meow! This companion book to Too Many Dogs brings a fun, rhyming text together with bright, humorous artwork in a book that will be irresistible to animal and cat lovers.

The story of this fascinating breed began over 2,000 years ago in China. There, little pugs were kept by monks and emperors for one reason: to be pets. That was their work—to sit in the laps of royalty—just as the work of other dogs was to protect sheep or help humans hunt. Today, pugs are still doing the work they were bred for: being the center of attention while sitting in the lap of luxury. Readers will meet pugs such as Joseph, whose favorite treats are ice cream and watermelon. When he’s not enjoying a delicious snack, Joseph travels with his owner to hospitals to cheer up sick patients. A narrative treat for dog lovers, Pug: What a Mug! covers the breed’s history and its relationship to the animal’s current size, physical and mental characteristics, and suitability as a pet.

Adapted from the Step Into Reading line, these board books feature simple, read-aloud stories accompanied by eye-catching art, sized for little hands to hold. Full color.

Recounts four fact-based tales of hauntings, including a ghost horse on the coast of Massachusetts, a haunted painting at a Virginia plantation, a skeleton in Colorado, and a ghostly sea captain of California.

An account of the 1962 attempted escape from Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary by Frank Lee Morris, John Anglin, and Clarence Anglin, and the ensuing search for the missing convicts.

Stanley and his brother Arthur have won a trip to visit the local fire station. But it''s not quite as exciting as they''d hoped. Where is the sliding down the pole? Where are the sirens and flashing lights? Then, all of a sudden, there''s a Code Nine call, and the whole Lambchop family are whizzing off to the rescue in a fire engine.