Central Kansas Library System

In Heart of the Wilderness, young Kendra Marty goes to live with her grandfather after her parents die in a river accident. But what can a trapper living in the backwoods offer a small child? Will Kendra ever be ready to face the scary and confusing world far from the wilderness she loves?

Winner of the 2002 Man Booker Prize for Fiction Pi Patel is an unusual boy. The son of a zookeeper, he has an encyclopedic knowledge of animal behavior, a fervent love of stories, and practices not only his native Hinduism, but also Christianity and Islam. When Pi is sixteen, his family emigrates from India to North America aboard a Japanese cargo ship, along with their zoo animals bound for new homes. The ship sinks. Pi finds himself alone in a lifeboat,...

A Swiss orphan is heartbroken when she must leave her beloved grandfather and their happy home in the mountains to go to school and to care for an invalid girl in the city.

The greatest superpower of all isn't to be part spider, part man, or to cast magic spells, the greatest power is the power to create. Daniel has that power. Daniel's secret abilities, like being able to manipulate objects and animals with his mind or to recreate himself in any shape he chooses, have helped him survive. But Daniel doesn't have a normal life. He is the protector of the earth, the Alien Hunter, with a mission beyond what anyone could...

The Alden family embark on a trip to an uninhabited South Sea Island. Mike Wood joins them for a holiday full of adventures planned by grandfather. On the island someone seems to be with them. Besides solving the mystery, they have a fine time living so far from civilization.

A classic tale of an orphan growing up in the 1800's of England. Intimately rooted in the author's own biography and written as a first-person narrative, "David Copperfield" charts a young man's progress through a difficult childhood in Victorian England to ultimate success as a novelist, finding true love along the way. Jeremy Tambling's provocative Introduction reveals subtle themes relevant today in Dickens' favorite work.

In this prequel to the Mysterious Benedict Society series, nine-year-old Nicholas Benedict, an orphan afflicted with an unfortunate nose and with narcolepsy, is sent to a new orphanage where he encounters vicious bullies, selfish adults, strange circumstances, and a mystery that could change his life forever.

The Big Friendly Giant is no ordinary bone-crunching giant. He is far too nice and it's lucky for Sophie that he is. If she had been carried off by any of the other giants she would have been breakfast. When Sophie hears that the giants are headed to England to steal some little children, she and the BFG decide they must stop them once and for all.

A holiday tale relates the story of a thirteen-year-old boy whose final gift from his mother, a sweater, is scorned in favor of more expensive gifts before a tragic car accident ends the mother's life.

As Daniel X continues to hunt for intergalactic aliens, he and his friends go to England searching for Beta, an outlaw who takes the form of fire and who killed Daniel's parents when he was two years old.