A boy cares for, feeds, and helps an abused stray dog to learn to trust humans again.

Twelve-year-old Winifred is being fostered by the eccentric but kind Margery Dawson while her mother is dealing with addiction problems, and mostly Fred is determined not to form any attachments to anybody--until the condition of Toby, the abused dog next door, captures first her attention and then her heart, and somehow it becomes increasingly difficult to stay detached from the people who are helping her.

Eleven-year-old Yonder stopped talking when her mother died, and she stopped going to school because of the bullies, knowing that her father would never even notice (although the social worker did); indeed the only creature that seems to care about her is the one-eyed Shetland pony called Dirt who lives on the neighboring farm--so when she discovers that Dirt is about to be sold for horsemeat she is determined to find a way to save him.

Asks readers to determine the plotline in a story with more than twenty possible endings in which a young girl learns lessons about love and loyalty when she is faced with decisions involving a puppy in danger.

When Ivan, a gorilla who has lived for years in a down-and-out circus-themed mall, meets Ruby, a baby elephant that has been added to the mall, he decides that he must find her a better life. Ivan is an easygoing gorilla. Living at the Exit 8 Big Top Mall and Video Arcade, he has grown accustomed to humans watching him through the glass walls of his domain. He rarely misses his life in the jungle. In fact, he hardly ever thinks about it at all. Instead,...