Júlia Sardà

A blast of wind, a house-rattling bang, and Mary Poppins arrives at Number Seventeen Cherry Tree Lane. Quicker than she can close her umbrella, she takes charge of the Banks children--Jane, Michael, and the twins--and she changes their lives forever.

"In this wacky true tale of American ingenuity, Annie Miller took to raising pigs in the yard after losing all but her mansion, but when the town wanted the pigs out, she removed the whole mansion instead--rolling it away slowly on logs"--

How does a story begin? Sometimes it begins with a dream, and a dreamer. Mary is one such dreamer, a little girl who learns to read by tracing the letters on the tombstone of her famous feminist mother, Mary Wollstonecraft, and whose only escape from her strict father and overbearing stepmother is through the stories she reads and imagines. Unhappy at home, she seeks independence, and at the age of sixteen runs away with poet Percy Bysshe Shelley,...

"Born at the stroke of midnight during a lightning storm, Nikola Tesla grew up to become one of the most important electrical inventors in the world. But before working with electricity, he was a child who loved playing with the animals on his family's farm in Serbia. An inventor since childhood, Tesla's patents encompassed everything from radar and remote-control technology to wireless communications. But his greatest invention was the AC induction...

"Duckworth is a difficult child. At least that's what his parents think. So when Duckworth tries to explain that a gigantic snake slithered out of his closet, his parents insist it's all in his head--he is far too old to be imagining such nonsense. (And will he please do his chores?) But even when the cobra slides right up and swallows Duckworth whole, his parents remain unconvinced! (Where did he find that snake costume, and will he please put it...

When twin sisters become separated after a big fight, their strong sense of attachment leads them to find one another again.

When Duckworth finds a snake in his closet, and then is swallowed whole, his parents are sure he is simply being difficult.