A New York Times bestseller, Heart of a Samurai is “a terrific biographical novel” (Wall Street Journal), filled with international adventure, a look at cultural differences, and both American and Japanese history.A Newbery Medal Winner * An NPR Backseat Book Club pickThis award-winning adventure novel will thrill...

Wind in the Willows meets Enola Holmes in this exciting, young middle grade mystery series from Newbery Honor–winning author Margi Preus and with art from Junyi WuMystery: Something that is difficult or impossible to understand.With a curious mind and a vast vocabulary (thanks to her wallpaper—pages of a discarded human dictionary), tiny Minerva Shrew would love nothing more than ...

Set in 1853 in Japan, this novel follows Yoshi, a Japanese boy who dreams of someday becoming a samurai. Unfortunately, as part of the serving class, Yoshi can never become a warrior. He is taken up by Manjiro, the protagonist of Preus's Heart of a Samurai, and becomes his servant and secret watchdog. Meanwhile, Commodore Matthew Perry and his USS Susquehanna squadron of steamships arrive in Edo Bay demanding "diplomatically" that Japan open its ports to foreign trade. Aboard the commodore...

The Wind in the Willows meets Enola Holmes in this exciting, young middle-grade mystery series from Newbery Honor–winning author Margi PreusMystery: Something that is difficult or impossible to understand.With a curious mind and a vast vocabulary (thanks to her wallpaper—pages of a discarded human dictionary), tiny Minerva Shrew would love nothing more than to solve the Big Mysteries of Life and the Universe.Instea...

Based on the true story of the French villagers in WWII who saved thousands of Jews, this novel tells how a group of young teenagers stood up for what is right. Among them is a young Jewish boy who learns to forge documents to save his mother and later goes on to save hundreds of lives with his forgery skills. There is also a girl who overcomes her fear to carry messages for the Resistance. And a boy who smuggles people into Switzerland. But there is always the threat that they will be cau...

Lily is a small but sturdy sailboat sharing a harbor with enormous cargo ships, speedy fishing vessels, and bossy tugboats that all have somewhere to go. And something to say—mostly, “Out of my way, Lily!”But Lily has somewhere to go, too. Out on the lake, the tall ships are coming!To leave the harbor, Lily has to wait for the lift bridge to rise. When the other ships blow their horns, “OOHHH-pen, OOHHH-pen,” the bridge lifts up for them.But not for Lily.Whe...

Newbery Honor winner Margi Preus and illustrator Jaime Zollars shed light on a trailblazing doctor known as the “Angel on Snowshoes” in this inspiring picture book biography.Dr. Kate Pelham Newcomb (or “Dr. Kate,” as she was known to her patients) was a doctor in rural northern Wisconsin during the early 1900s, a time when very few women practiced medicine.Because the nearest hospital was over two hours away and the snowy roads were often impassable, Dr. Ka...

In West of the Moon, award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Margi Preus expertly weaves original fiction with myth and folktale to tell the story of Astri, a young Norwegian girl desperate to join her father in America. After being separated from her sister and sold to a cruel goat farmer, Astri makes a daring escape. She quickly retrieves her little sister, and, armed with a troll treasure, a book of spells and curses, and a possibly magic hairbrush, they set off for America....

From New York Times bestselling and Newbery Honor–winning author Margi Preus, a gripping middle-grade fantasy about a girl who must save the children of her world from being “windswept.”In Tag’s world, children are disappearing. “Youngers” who venture Outside are windswept—vanishing in the swirling snow—Tag’s sisters among them. Many have tried to find the lost children; all have failed. And since the Other Times, the Powe...

Francie returns to Enchantment Lake looking for answers, only to get dragged into a murder mystery she might not surviveFrancie’s brother Theo has secrets—secrets Francie thinks she wants to know. But what if one of those secrets is that Theo is a murderer? To avoid considering that possibility, Francie plunges into her senior year at a small-town high school near Enchantment Lake in northern Minnesota. It’s a radical change from her private school in New York, but...

In the final Enchantment Lake mystery, Francie’s search for the truth about her mother—and herself—plunges her into danger during a North Woods winterWhen she wakes in her aunts’ cold cabin on the shore of Enchantment Lake, Francie remembers: everything about her life has changed. Or is about to. Or just might. Everything depends on the small, engraved silver box that she now possesses—if only she can follow its cryptic clues to the whereabouts of her missing mothe...

Some trees have lived many lifetimes, standing as silent witnesses to history. Some are remarkable for their age and stature; others for their usefulness. A bristlecone pine tree in California has outlived man by almost 4,000 years; a baobab tree in Australia served as a prison for Aboriginal prisoners at the turn of the twentieth century; and a major oak in England was used as a hiding place for Robin Hood and his men (or so the story goes…).The fourteen trees in this book have ea...