Twenty-two poems reflect Frances' observations on the events in her life.

This is an illustrated children's book featuring a family of oppossums. Frances is bored, and complains to his father that he has nothing to do. His father gives him a 'something-to-do' stone, and tells him to put it in his pocket and rub it when he can't think of anything to do. This works so well that he teaches the technique to his little sister.

When Father arrives home at the end of a sorely trying day to household chaos, he has to put his foot down so that peace is restored to everyone except a mouse.

Another classic from Russell Hoban and Quentin Blake, featuring a jam-powered frog and an eccentric headmistress ... as nutty and compulsive as ever.Fooling around as he loves to do, Tom invents a jam-powered frog, and he and his Aunt Bundlejoy Cosysweet take it out for a spin. When Captain Najork sees them hopping past his window, he and his hired sportsmen jump into their pedal-powered snake and set off in hot pursuit - bent on revenge after their earlier defeat at womble, muck and sneedball. Events, adventure and sheer craziness conspire to bring Tom and the Captain together at the local girls' boarding school, where Aunt Fidget Wonkham-Strong Najork is in the middle of a best-of-three arm-wrestling contest against the Headmistress ... and the Captain is finally reduced to eating swede-and-mutton slump after a very narrow escape indeed.

Harry follows the rag-and-bone man through the rain door and finds himself in a strange world

When Mr Flatbrain flattens their mountain to make way for a plastic mountain theme park, the O'Saurus family is not defeated. With the help of their animal friends and two or three thousand ants they rebuild Thunder Mountain and prepare for visitors. Which mountain will draw the crowds?

While delivering the news to the other field mice, Charlie Meadows, who loves dancing with his shadow in the moonlight, narrowly escapes being eaten by the owl.

'This table, ' said the man. 'What about the table?' said the woman. 'It's wearing me out, ' said the man. What to do? The man makes a decision. He finds a tablewood tree, cuts it down, saws it up and makes a new table. There's nothing like a new table. This one is strong enough for elephants to dance on But. 'Where would we get the elephants?' said the woman. 'Advertise in the Classified Section, ' said the man. 'Elephants wanted for table work. Must be agile.' It looks as if the man and the woman might need some more tables 'We could open a restaurant, ' said the man. A restaurant with dancing elephants - where will it all l

An Indian Rajah goes tiger hunting on his elephant equipped with telephone, bar and stereo.

Lavinia Bat teaches her baby how to move and hunt in the spring night.

From metal-munching dragons, secret-whispering statues and flame-like ghost horses, to the sadness of captive animals and doomed heroic deeds, the poems in this collection blend quirky humour with rhythm and rhyme, imagination with real experience.

Jim Frog (Ponders)

Recently widowed and increasingly lonely, Roswell Clark's life had arrived at the point when he felt he needed a tattoo. His ideal image was that of a bat featured on an eighteenth-century bowl in the Victoria and Albert Museum, but strangely, on a visit to the museum, he encountered a woman called Sarah Varley, who was clearly compelled by the same bat. What did it mean? Sarah dealt in antiques and Roswell soon ran into her stalls in Chelsea and Covent Garden. His calling, which grew out of an obsession with crash-test dummies, was a bit harder to explain. It led from the invention of a popular children's toy to lucrative commissions from a Parisian sybarite for wooden working models with very adult moving parts. Both Roswell and Sarah had lost their spouses and were still grieving in their different ways. And then Christ started putting a hand in - literally - when a fragment of an ancient crucifix fetched up in one of Sarah's antique lots. Between some compulsion conveyed by this hand and Sarah's natural urge to make improvements in people, Roswell's work took a surprising new turn... Russell Hoban's delicious new novel combines much about art - traditional and conceptual - with new angles on Christ, crash-test dummies, antiques, pornography and a charming tale of romance.

The Empress of Zurm and others receive invitations to a battle from Zormla and his select squad of one-eyed teddy bears.

Big John Turkle