Meet Oleander, who likes to keep busy, and her pet salamander, Sally Mander, who prefers to take it easy. As they go about their days in these five stories, they're visited by the Sprinkle Fairy (she's the owner of a word factory in Sicily) and her helpers, who've slipped a Big Word into each story. Which means, when Sally Mander is slacking off on her gardening duties, Oleander accuses her of procrastinating. And when Sally Mander loses a fight to a bird over a worm, she demands that the bird regurgitate the worm immediately. It's all fun with words --- BIG time! This collection of quirky, bite-sized stories is part of a clever series of highly original early readers by Judith Henderson. The text is dialogue driven, broken up into small bits, and accompanied by T. L. McBeth's small, simple and humor-filled spot illustrations, making it just right for emerging readers. These books are also terrific tools for expanding budding vocabularies, with the pronunciation and definition included for each of the five multisyllabic Big Words. Children will be trying them out in no time!

Follow along in this board book adaptation of Ducks! as Duck wanders away from the pond for a moment and returns to find the other ducks gone. Searching high and low, Duck discovers many clues around the city - squawking, feathers, ponds - but no ducks. Will Duck's feathered friends finally be found? With spare text and lots of visual jokes, this is a funny and sweet celebration of family.

It's Christmas, and Randy is decked out in his holiday best. He can't wait to see the pretty lights on all the trees and eat a candy cane or two - but the most exciting part of Christmas has to be Santa and his reindeer. Can a beautiful horse be a reindeer? It'll take snow, carrots, and maybe even a flying leap to find out. Randy is determined - but is he cut out for these reindeer games?