Kevin Hawkes

A down-on-his-luck painter with poor eyesight teams up with a dog with a knack for painting portraits.

Carried off to a frozen land by the giants to be their king, Lord Buckliness misses the delights of summer and spring.

A lion starts visiting the local library but runs into trouble as he tries to both obey the rules and help his librarian friend. Miss Merriweather, the head librarian, is very particular about rules in the library. No running allowed. And you must be quiet. But when a lion comes to the library one day, no one is sure what to do. There aren't any rules about lions in the library. And, as it turns out, this lion seems very well suited to library visiting....

In this cumulative tale, a host of Halloween spooks, including a cat, a witch, and a ghoul, are drawn to the tapping of a little girl's toe.

As they get older, several sisters decide that they must kidnap children and bring them to their secluded island home to help with the work of caring for an assortment of unusual sea creatures.

Describes the need for sailors to be able to determine their position at sea and the efforts of John Harrison, an eighteenth century man who spent his life refining instruments to enable them to do this.

Determined to be more than just an ordinary witch, Heckie, whose speciality is changing people into animals, settles in a small town determined to use her powers for good purposes.

Wesley's garden produces a crop of huge, strange plants which provide him with clothing, shelter, food, and drink, thus helping him create his own civilization and changing his life.

"At first Tally doesn't want to go to the boarding school called Delderton. But she soon discovers that it is a wonderful place where freedom and self expression are valued. Tally organizes a ragtag dance troupe so the school can participate in an international folk dancing festival in Bergania in the summer of 1939. There she befriends Karil, the crown prince, who would love nothing more than to have ordinary friends and attend a school like Delderton....

These eight stories, most of which include a bit of magic, include tales of a wishing mat, an enormous cat, and a very strange house.