"How to introduce kids to Shakespeare--not just to the stories behind the plays but to the richness of his language and the depth of his characters. That's the challenge that Leon Garfield, a wonderful children's book writer, undertook to meet in his monumental and delightful Shakespeare Stories. Here are twenty-one of the Bard's plays, presented in what is not a series of dry retellings, but rather a refashioning of the dramas as stories, in a way...

Relates the rise of Tom, the hotel cat, from catcher of mice in the cellar to successful upstairs cat in charge of the hotel's guest cats.

Presents playful recipes for such dishes as "Wood Chip Dip," "Seesaw Salad," "Roast Rocks," and "Pencil Sharpener Pudding," to be prepared for and enjoyed by dolls.

When Peter, an eight-year-old London boy with neglectful parents and a distant nanny, is transformed into a cat after rescuing a stray, Jennie, from being hit by a car, Jennie takes care of him despite her contempt for humans.

The outbreak of a war between truck drivers and pushcart peddlers brings the mounting problems of traffic to the attention of both the city of New York and the world.

"A series of adventures in which the clever, independent, and unstoppable Polly fools the persistent, hungry young Wolf time and again"--

When a robber steals his grandmother's musical coffee mill, Kasperl and his best friend Seppel try to catch the robber, who enlists the help of his wicked magician friend, Petrosilius Zackleman, a gluttonous villain with a weakness for fried potatoes.

"It's 5pm on New Year's Eve in the Villa Nightmare, and as Shadow Sorcery Minister Beelzebub Preposteror's thumb-striking clock counts down each hour with an "Ouch!", Minister Preposteror draws closer to missing his midnight deadline forfulfilling his annual quota of evil deeds and being "foreclosed." Up against a tight deadline and threats from His Hellish Excellency, the Minister of Pitch Darkness himself, Preposteror has all but given up when the...

A young cat envies her brother the pampered treatment he gets when he is sick in bed until she gets sick too.

Thirteen picture stories of a magic show, a sea disaster, and other dramas develop separately but simultaneously.