Elly MacKay

A young girl discovers a vacant park next door to her new house that is intended for butterflies, but when she has trouble getting butterflies to stay there, her new neighbors help her plant flowers to attract them.

It is a cold and rainy evening when Gran gives her granddaughter something special: tickets to the ballet. Her granddaughter is reluctant to go. The weather is terrible and they have to wear fancy, uncomfortable clothes. But as the curtains rise on The Nutcracker, the girl's eyes light up as she's introduced to the magic of the theater. The bright costumes, the intricate dances, the magical music, and a new friend all combine to captivate the girl...

When a young treasure hunter goes to the beach for a day of playing in the surf, she dives deep under the waves to find treasures of all kinds. Some treasures have stories to tell and others are too precious to keep. It seems treasure is everywhere, but nothing could make her feel more like a queen than a perfect day at the beach with her grandfather and furry best friend.

Illustrations and text follow a family's morning routine from the perspective of the earliest riser in the house.

What starts as a blue-sky day begins to turn into rolling thunder as a storm brews.

"A little girl dreams of adventures in the water and feels the spirit of the ocean all around her . . . even though she lives on the prairie, with flat land as far as the eye can see. But she won't let a little detail like that stand in the way of being a meadow mermaid! Frolicking in the "waves" of wheat and "oceans" of grass, spying sea horses and . . . a shipwrecked sailor? Even if that shipwreck is actually an overturned bike and the sailor a...

"The electricity in Maya's house has gone out again. Worse, she is afraid of the dark -- and her fear has been even worse since her father died. Now it feels as if the darkness will never go away. Maya's mother distracts her with a legend about the banyan tree, which saved the world from the first monsoon by drinking up the floodwaters, and growing tall and strong. Later that night, unsettled by the noises around her, Maya revisits the story in her...