Three families, two worlds and one magical portal. No one comes to the second world on purpose. The portal between worlds only opens when least expected. But the Raft King is determined to change that. He needs Pip, a boy with an amazing gift. Pip's is just the first of three tales, linking the twins Venus and Swimmer, captured from a slave ship in the first world, and Thanh and his sister Sang, from a later time, escaping postwar Vietnam. What connects these three sets of siblings is the adventure of a lifetime, some helpful sea monsters and a very special crack in the sea.

Longlisted for the Cogan Heroes Picture Book Award 2023 Winner of the Caldecott Honor Winner of the Middle East Book Award 'A beautifully told and illustrated story that offers a unique perspective on both war and humanity.' Kirkus, starred review Out of the ravages of war came hope. How an act of kindness inspired millions worldwide. When war came to Syria, many fled the once-beautiful city of Aleppo and were forced to become refugees in far-flung places. But Mohammad Alaa Aljaleel decided to stay and work as an ambulance driver, helping the civilians that couldn't leave. He quickly realised that it wasn't just people who needed care, but also the hundreds of cats abandoned on the streets. Using the little money he earned, he began feeding and looking after them. But there were too many for Alaa to care for on his own, so he asked the world for help to keep his new friends safe. Soon, his call was answered. Alaa's brave and heart-warming story is brought to triumphant life on these pages, which include a note from Alaa himself. Alaa's cat sanctuary has expanded to work with local children traumatised by a lifetime of war. To find out more about his work, visit ernestosanctuary.org

Enter the haunted world of Ancient Japan in this spine-tingling collection of ghostly tales told and retold across the centuries. From Goblin infested caves and haunted Tombs, to vengeful spirits and strange, sinister happenings, Ancient Japan was a country and culture that lived with between realms: the world of everyday and the world of supernatural. It was a time and place where men could be brought down by karmic forces or lured into deadly danger by ghostly apparitions, and where the land held sorrowful secrets or stories that long-awaited an opportunity to reveal them and seek reparation. The Snow Ghost and Other Tales brings together some of the best and scariest tales that endured across centuries of folk lore in one new beautiful hardback collection. Finally commited to writing during the turn of the twenieth cenutry by a unique set of folklorists, the ghost stories presented in this new anthology will transport readers to a time of magic and mystery, and let them relish in the spine-tingling traditions of Japanese culture largely lost now to modernity.

Here are the moments that our fairy tales forgot or deliberately concealed, reimagined by one of the most gifted storytellers of his generation, the Pulitzer Prize winning author of The Hours, and exquisitely illustrated by Yuko Shimizu. Rarely have our bedtime stories been this dark, this perverse, or this true. The Beast stands ahead of you in line at the convenience store, buying smokes and a Slim Jim, his devouring smile aimed at the cashier. A malformed little man with a knack for minor acts of wizardry goes to disastrous lengths to procure a child. A loutish and lazy Jack prefers living in his mother's basement to getting a job, until the day he trades a cow for a handful of magic beans. In A Wild Swan and Other Tales, the people and the talismans of lands far, far away - the mythic figures of our childhoods and the source of so much of our wonder - are transformed by Michael Cunningham into stories of sublime revelation.

Oscar Wilde's fairy tales are some of his most elegant and charming pieces of writing. He produced two books of fairy tales -- THE HAPPY PRINCE AND OTHER TALES, and A HOUSE OF POMEGRANATES . They've rarely been collected in one volume -- and never with stunning artwork by Yuko Shimizu (THE UNWRITTEN, BARBED WIRE BASEBALL, A WILD SWAN), one of the modern masters of illustration and graphic art. Wilde's original fairy tales are moving, sweet, sad and magical -- much like Yuko's artwork. Yuko is one of the most celebrated and admired editorial illustrators in the world, and her work is perfectly aligned with Wilde's witty, rueful voice. The edition also features an original introduction by the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Michael Cunningham. Illuminated Editions is a series of works of classic fiction, prose, and poetry, beautifully designed and lavishly illustrated in exquisitely produced small-batch editions. These volumes intend to harken back to the lovingly crafted, handsomely bound illustrated books of the Victorian era and the golden age of illustration, re-imagined using modern design sensibilities and the most modern techniques in presentation, book-craft, and printing. Each cloth-bound volume in this series is presented in a die-cut slipcase, printed on high quality wood-free uncoated paper, and powerfully elaborated by one of the finest graphic artists in the world.