Katherine Paterson

A Stubborn Sweetness and Other Stories for the Christmas Season is a collection of modern-day short stories by Katherine Paterson, award-winning author of Bridge to Terabithia and The Great Gilly Hopkinsboth loved by children and adults for over twenty years. This compilation includes stories of real-life people such as a shopping mall's night watchman, a lonely widower, a pregnant teenage runaway, a political prisoner in China, a grieving mother,...

A thirteen-year-old boy describes the poverty and discontent of eighteenth century Osaka and the world of puppeteers in which he lives.

A soothsayer and his faithful donkey save the Israelites from destruction by King Balak on the orders of an angel.

When Lora joins Castro's literacy campaign, she travels into the impoverished countryside to teach her fellow Cuban's to read and write, while sharing the dangers posed by counterrevolutionaries in the hills.

Though Rosie is the meanest cow in the herd, five-year-old Marvin is inconsolable when she is sold and he and his family move to another dairy farm.

Birdie has questions for God. For starters, why couldn't God roll history back to September 10, 2001, and fix things--so the next day was an ordinary sunny day and not the devastating lead-in to two wars? Daddy has already been to Iraq twice. Now he's going again, and Birdie is sure he'll die. At the very least, she won't see him again for a year, and everything will not be OK. (Why do grown-ups lie?) To save money, she, Mom, and baby Billy have moved...

After the death of her self-absorbed parents, a clever princess shows the peasants in her country how to make better lives for themselves.

The vain young daughter of a samurai finds her comfortable life ripped apart when opposing warrior clans begin a struggle for imperial control of Japan.

While journeying to find a remedy for her mother's illness, Celia and her grumpy dog Brumble encounter strange and threatening characters who have never known kindness.