It’s also a journey, visiting mountains, cities, and oceans. It’s a home; it’s shelter. It’s energy, giving away its force to humans for power and industry. It’s a meeting place; a memory; a place to wash, to find food, to dream; it’s a word.Such is a river.

    Just ask them; they'll be happy to tell you.But every girl knows that there can only be one "best."Can Sasha keep the girls from turning the arena into a war zone and still snag a spot on the coveted Youth Equestrian National Team?

    

    Her older brother, Jeff, is a fighter pilot doing his bit somewhere out there in the sky. Teresa worries about him, hoping he will get home to Kansas safely.As a way of speeding Jeff’s return, Teresa and her dad plant victory gardens. The gardens help with the war effort—and Teresa likes sowing seeds and watching them grow. It’s life affirming.For the past two years, the Markses have planted tomatoes (Jeff’s favorite!), winning taste-testing duels with a curmudgeonly neighbor. But this spring, when the neighbor is hospitalized, Teresa rallies her friends to tend to his garden. She can’t bear to see it plowed under. She even wonders whether she should use her secret for growing better tomatoes on her rival’s plants. But her faith in secret weapons, in victory gardens, in people, and in life itself is shattered as the war rages on overseas and death strikes close to home.From the Hardcover edition.

    A tufted puffin digs out a burrow to shelter its young on a cliff near the sea. A lynx makes a shelter under a fallen tree to snuggle with its kitten. Young children will learn all about these animals and more, as each spread also includes a short piece of nonfiction about each creature.Lovingly illustrated and lyrically written, this is the second children's book written and illustrated by the husband-and-wife artist and author team Mitchell Watley and Sarah Asper-Smith.

    But there was a time when people hunted the otters almost to extinction. Without sea otters to eat them, an army of hungry sea urchins grew and destroyed entire kelp forests. Fish and other animals that depended on the kelp were lost, too. But when people protected the sea otters with new laws, their numbers began to recover, and so did the kelp forests. Susannah Buhrman-Deever offers a beautifully written account of a trophic cascade, which happens when the removal of a single element affects an entire habitat. Asides that dig deeper are woven throughout Matthew Trueman’s dynamic illustrations, starring a raft of charismatic sea otters. Back matter includes more information about sea otters and kelp forests, including their importance and current status, the effects of the international fur trade on indigenous peoples, and a list of books and websites for readers who wish to continue to explore.