When she confronts a screaming raccoon that may or may not be a ghost, animal control officer Francine Poulet questions her abilities.

After a terrible accident, a young girl wakes up to discover that she has been given the body of a chimpanzee.

"Kizzy had dreamed of every possible way she might get a pony, but she'd never expected to pick one up from the bakery aisle in the supermarket. Wherever he's come from, the pony is everything Kizzy ever wished for. With a bit of training, Kizzy knows they'll be winning rosettes in no time. There's just one problem: How do you keep a pony in a twelfth-floor flat without your mum finding out?" --

Eleven-year-old Yonder stopped talking when her mother died, and she stopped going to school because of the bullies, knowing that her father would never even notice (although the social worker did); indeed the only creature that seems to care about her is the one-eyed Shetland pony called Dirt who lives on the neighboring farm--so when she discovers that Dirt is about to be sold for horsemeat she is determined to find a way to save him.

In Laos, twelve-year-old Tam must work at a bear farm where bears are cruelly caged and milked for their bile, but when a familiar cub is brought to the farm, Tam will do anything to free both the cub, and himself.

"Twelve-year-old Fred (never Winifred) is being fostered by the eccentric but kind Margery Dawson while her mother is dealing with addiction problems, and mostly Fred is determined not to form any attachments to anybody--until the condition of Toby, the abused dog next door, captures first her attention and then her heart, and somehow it becomes increasingly difficult to stay detached from the people who are helping her." --

The water-babies was inspired by Kingsley's thoughts on evolution. He was one of the few clergymen to accept wholeheartedly Darwin's theories of evolution and natural selection and to devote himself to the spread of the new knowledge of nature.

"Elsa Roth and her best friend, Olivia, are accompanying Elsa's mother on an expedition to study the diet of orcas in the San Juan Islands in the Pacific Northwest, where they are soon caught up in the drama surrounding August, a young orca calf, who has gotten separated from his pod--the marine mammal sanctuary wants to rescue and rehabilitate him for a quick return to his own pod when they can be found, but the local Oceanarium wants to keep him...

When he finds a lost beagle in the hills behind his West Virginia home, Marty tries to hide it from his family and the dog's real owner, a mean-spirited man known to shoot deer out of season and to mistreat his dogs.

"When Ivan, a gorilla who has lived for years in a down-and-out circus-themed mall, meets Ruby, a baby elephant that has been added to the mall, he decides that he must find her a better life." --