Lane Smith

A series of short silly stories takes a humorous look at the activities of various members of the Hocky family.

Two readers compare a print to digital media, and learn books are still valuable.

Sam, Joe, and Fred finish their school project on ancient Egypt without using their magical time travel book, but when Joe's sister Anna plays with it and travels to the land of pyramids, they must follow her back in time to bring her back to 1996.

The wolf gives his own outlandish version of what really happened when he tangled with the three little pigs.

As a baby gorilla sits reading quietly, a baby donkey pesters him about the source of his absorption.

Pinocchio has been turned into a boy but no one, not even he, realizes it as he walks through Collodi-town trying to get some hot chicken soup for Geppetto.

When one donkey tells his friend that they need to talk about "the big elephant in the room," his friend wonders what this embarrassing issue could possibly be.

Two children find an abandoned house deep in the woods. With peeling paint, broken windows, and personal items of the former tenants remaining, they wonder who once lived there and where they might have gone.

A boy is unhappy about having to wear glasses, until his doctor provides an imaginative list of well-adjusted eyeglass wearers.

A child explores the ordinary life of his extraordinary great-grandfather, as expressed in his topiary garden.