Brian Floca

"An ode to the essential workers keeping the country operating during the COVID-19 pandemic"--

It is the summer of 1869, and trains, crews, and families are traveling together, riding America's brand new transcontinental railroad. The pages come alive with the details of the trip and the sounds, speed, and strength of the mighty locomotives; the work that keeps them moving; and the thrill of travel from plains to mountain to ocean. Come hear the hiss of the steam, feel the heat of the engine, watch the landscape race by. Come ride the rails,...

Poppy the deer mouse urges her family to move next to a field of corn big enough to feed them all forever, but Mr. Ocax, a terrifying owl, has other ideas.

Quick! If you don't move fast, you're going to miss him -- there he goes-- Randolph Caldecott, future famous illustrator. His sketchbook is full of hurly-burly; wild weather, frisky animals and people so sprightly they can barely hold on to the pages. But in the 1850s, there are no children's books like that. Not yet. Many are published, but their pictures look still, full of pretty poses and cluttered scenery. No one has imagined how much fun an...

Poppy, accompanied by her troublesome son Junior, his skunk friend, and Uncle Ereth the porcupine, responds to a summons to return to her ancestral home, Gray House, to save the mice there from destruction by a bulldozer.

Max and Mo, the class hamsters, have fun after the students return from picking apples, in a story that includes instructions for making apple prints and a recipe for applesauce.

Ragweed, a young country mouse, leaves his family and travels to the big city, where he finds excitement and danger and sees cats for the first time.

When tomboy Marty is cast as the princess in the third-grade play, she learns about improvisation, which helps her become more adaptable.

With help from her Grandma Barb, Marty builds a habitat for worms in her school cafeteria as part of the Save the Earth Project.

"How did Ragweed and Poppy meet and become friends? This book tells their hilarious story! Adventurous golden mouse Ragweed is on a freight train leaving the city of Amperville. On his journey, he meets Lotar, a young and bothersome raccoon who has lost his mother. Though Ragweed doesn't really want to help the raccoon, by doing so he winds up in Dimwood Forest. Ragweed is now ready to strike off on his own, but it's not long before he hears a cry...