Zilpha Keatley Snyder

When Melanie Ross first meets April Hall, she's not sure what to think. What other sixth grade girl wears her blonde hair piled in a twist and flaunts false eyelashes? But when the two girls discover the storage shed outside the A-Z Antiques and Curio Shop, they discover they both love anything to do with ancient Egypt. Soon the friends create the Egypt Game. Dressed up in costumes, they secretly hold ceremonies and dance in the ghostly interior of...

Blending realism and fantasy, Zilpha Keatley Snyder was a master at drawing young readers into mesmerizing worlds. Collected in one volume, here are some of her most memorable and beloved novels. The Velvet Room explores ranch life for a child of a former migrant worker. Cat Running offers a unique glimpse into one girl's experience when her family takes in a malnourished, barefooted "Okie" during the Depression In Song of the Gargoyle, thirteen-year-old...

Who stole the buried treasure? Carlos Garcia, Eddy Wong, and Bucky Brockhurst are building a brand-new private clubhouse when they stumble upon buried treasure. No sooner have they hauled the old metal box out of the ground than Bucky's irritating kid sister, Muffy, shows up and tells him he has to come home. Left alone with the box, Carlos and Eddy manage to pry it open. It's filled with hundreds of gold coins! Knowing Bucky will be furious that...

It's the girls against the boys when the fight for a baseball diamond erupts into an all-out war Fifth graders Eddy Wong, Carlos Garcia, and Bucky "Buckaroo" Brockhurst all live in the Castle Court apartment complex. They're part of a special club called the PROs. They plan to build a baseball diamond on the site of the deserted Dragoman property and are already picking out balls, mitts, and bats. Kate Nicely and Aurora and Athena Pappas also live...

Summer is just a teenager, but sometimes she feels like the parent Fifteen-year-old Summer McIntyre lives with her mother, Oriole, and seven-year-old sister, Sparrow, in a trailer in Alvarro Bay City, overlooking the Pacific. Oriole is a Northern California flower child who fantasizes about being at one with nature and forgets about needing money. Even though she's only fifteen, Summer is good at being Mom. That is, until Oriole's new boyfriend upsets...

Twelve-year-old Alexandra stumbles upon the key to a hidden world-but is it a gift, or a nightmare? Twelve-year-old Alexandra Hobson feels ignored and unloved in her family of annoying, self-absorbed overachievers. One day in the woods she hears a shot, and is horrified to see a large, beautiful bird fall to the ground. She takes the injured egret home, hiding it in the basement behind the furnace, where it joins the other wounded creatures Xandra...

From three-time Newbery Medal winner Zilpha Keatley Snyder comes the story of three desperate kids who just want to run away Dani O'Donnell hates the dusty desert town of Rattler Springs and the ramshackle cabin where she lives with her widowed mother. On the eve of her thirteenth birthday, Dani hatches a plan to run away and return home to Sea Grove, California, with its palm trees and ocean breezes. But her scheme gets complicated when Stormy Arigotti,...

The Castle Court Kids are back-and this time, they're teaming up to fight the bad guys Kate Nicely and her BFF, Aurora Pappas, haven't told anyone about their top-secret science project that's going to win first place at the Annual Interschool Science Fair. Carlos Garcia, Bucky Brockhurst, and Eddy Wong are working on one, too, if they could just agree on an idea that isn't lame. But everyone could lose to Aurora's kid brother, Carson, and Eddy's...

Fifteen-year-old James has just discovered the magnificence of nature-but can he protect it from the phoniness of the material world? When his academic-minded parents decide to forsake civilization for a wilderness summer in the Sierra Nevada mountains, James Fielding figures he'll be counting the minutes until it's over. But in the woods one day, he comes upon a magnificent deer and becomes fascinated by its majesty and beauty. Then he meets two...

All Gib ever wanted was to be adopted, but life with a family isn't quite what he thought it would be Gib was sent to an orphanage when he was six years old, and with each year, he knows it becomes less likely that he will be adopted into a loving family. As kids get older, they are more likely to be adopted onto a farm, meaning a hard life of unpaid labor. And after seeing a friend come back battered and near death, Gib is understandably worried....