Books with author Rogers

This collectible series builds into a fascinating library of reference material, covering every aspect of Key Stage 2 science and beyond. When used in conjunction with www.usborne-quicklinks.com, the reader has direct access to all featured Web addresses, as well as a huge selection of free downloadable pictures for homework and projects. Other titles in this series include: Animal World, Light, Sound & Electricity, Earth & Space, Materials, Energy, Forces & Motion, Human Body and World of Plants.

Michael is almost eight years old and the middle child of a struggling Tennessee family. At play he is often a pirate, imagining ferocious fights and feats of derring-do. He also has an unusually strong serious side and spends a lot of his time trying to figure out how to ease his mother's burden. The mixture of a vivid imagination and intense wish to help his family draw him into an adventure which surprises not only him, but his mom and two sisters as well.

Sally and her brother put on hand puppet shows for neighborhood kids. They're so good at it that they're invited to a nearby hospital children's ward to see if they can bring some laughter into a sad setting. One little girl is in very serious condition.Sally makes the decision to accept this difficult challenge and her puppets come magically alive. When there are no people around, the puppets' personalities emerge, along with their talents and concerns. Some of Sally's most important puppets go missing and she fears that she cannot perform without them. One puppet, the plainest and least popular among his puppet neighbors, is suspected by them to be the thief.

Rachel and her best friend Paul spend long summer hours sailing the shoreline of their New England village in the pram her dad built for her. Sensing deep ties to a nautical past, she often pores over dusty volumes in the village library suggesting that a pirate queen with the same last name once paid frequent visits to their sleepy village. Although he teases her about such notions, Paul is a willing first mate. The pair secretly decides to celebrate arriving at age fifteen by sailing across a tricky stretch of water to an island just off the coast. Their gray-haired friend and mentor Captain Jensen has promised them the use of his eighteen-footer, Seawitch, although they get nowhere at all in extracting blind permission from their parents. On the foggy evening of their birthday party they find themselves immersed in an adventure they hadn’t planned on.