In Marla Frazee’s The Farmer and the Clown, a young clown falls off a circus train in the middle of nowhere, but he is rescued by a farmer who lives nearby. Over the course of a couple days, the clown brings happiness to the farmers life with his antics, and the farmer’s gruff exterior wanes.

A class of young astronauts rides a yellow spaceship from their space station to the moon for a field trip. Once the ship lands, the students get out with their teacher to explore. One student stops to sit and draw, dozes off — and wakes up to find the class and the ship have already left! Sequels include Field Trip to the Ocean Deep and Field Trip to Dinosaur Valley.

A little boy makes a boat out of newspaper and takes it outside on a rainy day. He and the boat play in the puddles and downpour, but when he sets it in a fast-moving gutter stream, it gets swept away — down a drain and out into a pond, emerging soggy and ruined. Disappointed, the boy heads home, dries off, and warms up with cocoa — then gets inspired to start a new project with more newspaper, setting up a fresh adventure once the sun comes out.

A boy at the beach equipped with binoculars, a magnifying glass, and a microscope, studies everything that washes ashore. One day, a wave knocks him over and he finds a barnacle-covered, old-fashioned underwater camera on the sand. He gets the film developed, and the photos reveal a surreal underwater world.

A baby bird has grown used to Mama Bird delivering worms right to the nest, so when she coaxes him out onto the branch to learn to fly, he throws a tantrum — which ends up knocking him out of the nest and down to the ground. Mama Bird encourages him to try flying back up, but baby bird refuses. It is only when Mama Bird mentions the threat of owls that baby bird is motivated to try.

A zookeeper is putting all his animals to bed one night, but as he thinks he closes the gates, the gorilla is sneakily letting all the animals out of their cages! The gorilla, elephant, lion, armadillo, hyena, giraffe, and mouse all follow the zookeeper into his house for the night, much to the surprise of his wife. Although not completely wordless, the story only has a few words and there are many things happening in the picture to discuss with your child.

During the day, humans enjoy a fairground on the edge of the forest. But once the fair closes and the people go home, a raccoon sneaks through a gap in the fence and switches the power back on — the games, rides and food stalls open for business again, with animals paying in acorns, rocks and leaves. The forest creatures take over and the animals play until dawn. They tidy up and slip back into the woods — leaving the fair’s owner to discover puzzling evidence the next morning that something happened overnight.

A young girl is walking home from school through a heavy snowstorm. Along the way, she encounters a wolf pack, including a lost wolf pup that’s become separated from its family. When the girl herself becomes lost and disoriented in the blizzard, she finds the shivering pup and decides to help it find its way back to its mother, even though she’s struggling to find her own way home.