Artist Josie Iselin celebrates the diversity and beauty of nature with her exquisite portraits of seashells. Like her extremely popular Beach Stones and Leaves & Pods, Seashells is not a field guide but an artful and informative portrayal of a beloved part of our natural world. While it draws upon unparallelled shell collections, Seashells balances the exotic with the familiar, from tropical corals and rare fossils to everyday clamshells and barnacles. As in her previous books, Iselin arranges these precious natural objects into striking images, which she produces on a flatbed scanner. In her introduction and captions, marine geologist and paleontologist, Sandra J. Carlson introduces the reader to seashells in all their variety, explaining why they look as they do. Both an art book and a contemplation of nature, Seashells combines aesthetic delight in natural things with scientific fact and philosophical wonder.

A contemporary MG cowboy-Indian story Dachota - that's Brandon to you - is torn from his Minneapolis home and placed with Lakota Sioux relatives he hardly knew existed. Living on their ranch in the Black Hills of South Dakota feels like he's landed on another planet. It's not about a clash of cultures for Big City Brandon. It all has to do with survival. Can he survive sixth grade in a school where grades depend on attendance? How can he hide his father's Norwegian skin color which makes him an easy target? There are endless chores on a ranch. And mean chickens And who understands Indian humor, especially when they hardly ever smile? Don't forget the coyotes, cougars and the stud bull Jolly Good who is jolly bad, not to mention rattlesnakes at every step. He never knew how good city life was until he lost it. Follow Brandon as he searches for a new normal in this modern cowboy-Indian world.

The schooner's captain pulled twelve-year-old Honor Sullivan apart from the other orphans. Captain Klaus claimed he needed a strong lad like Honor for a sister he didn't even have. But Honor has a sister - two of them. The last he'd seen of their fuzzy red heads was the end of September, 1854, as they headed down the ship's plank for the Orphan Train, going off to be placed out with a new family. Tricked by the captain, and sailing around Michigan's Mitt, Honor learns the ropes and duties of a sailor. He passes the time aboard down in the dark hold, listening to Old Salty's tales of shipwrecks and ghosts. The stories won't distract him for long, though. As soon as he can, Honor plans to abandon ship and go in search of his sisters.

Just how many homes and friends does a kid have to lose in twelve years? Driven from his neighborhood during the Chicago fire of 1871, Adrian and his parents move to the Michigan wilderness where his father lands a job at the sawmill. The town is called Singapore - as if a name could make a tiny spit of a town into a great seaport. Back in Chicago, it was easy to keep his hobby a secret, even from his father. But in this small town, will people discover who the true knitter of the family is? Only his best friend, big R.T., keeps him level. Adrian's attempts to protect his new - and first - girlfriend, Elizabeth, from the school bully seem to backfire, especially when he hears Jake's big brother, Otto the Monster, is heading to town. Then, just as Adrian starts to feel that Singapore is his home, he discovers the moving sand dunes along the Lake Michigan shore are slowly burying his town. He tries to stop it, but how can he fight both man and nature?