Twelve Impossible Things Before Breakfast: Stories

Features the Nebula Award-winning novella "Lost Girls."

In these modern myths and tales for the young and the young at hear, Jane Yolen transforms the impossible into the familiar and real.

Among the outlandish wonders are an Alice grown tough in Wonderland, a dear--but dead--mother's homecoming, a bridge that longs for a goat-eating troll, and a mutiny among Peter Pan's troops.

Other tales turn household hazards into unexpected wonder, from a fiery phoenix hatching on a bedroom dresser after an apartment blaze to a garden skirmish where a girl shrinks to battle warrior ants with dried berries.

Across coastal waters and quiet neighborhoods, an avenging Scottish fisher lad hunts a brother-killing sea dragon with a cold iron hook, while an eleven-year-old in goalie pads pedals out to confront jellyfish-like aliens that reek of burnt eggs.

From creaky Victorian hallways to enchanted Central Park paths, every impossible encounter demands its own brand of nerve.

• Spooky Stories: When Hilary agrees to sit for the Mitchell twins, she plays along with their hallway-tapping ritual without realizing what actually prowls behind the bedroom doors.
• Urban Fantasy: Sixteen-year-old Zena enters Central Park, where twilight rays trigger animal instincts and dangerous predators roam.
• Sibling Dynamics: In "Bolundeers," young Danny fears that hungry creatures are sprouting in the backyard compost heap, turning to his sister and a remembered lullaby for comfort.
• Mythology: A fragile boy born during a bitter winter storm finds himself drawn away from the human world to follow the fair riders singing in the northern frost.
• Also by This Author: Encounter, Johnny Appleseed and The Young Merlin Trilogy.