What is a mosquito's nature? A large man enters his flat; a mosquito in top hat with valise follows, entering through the window above door. The man goes to sleep; the mosquito lands next to him, opens the valise, and takes out a grinding wheel to sharpen his proboscis. Methodically, the mosquito gets one, two, then three drinks as the man tosses, slaps, turns, covers himself, and rubs the wounds. After a fourth drink, the mosquito is so full he can barely right himself. Still he has more. Bloated, he can only hover above the sleeping man's face. Suspense builds: can he launch? He's atop his victim's nose. He jettisons his valise. Will he now be light enough to escape?

The story of the defense of the mission-turned-fortress by 185 Texans against an overwhelming Mexican army in 1836.

When Pollyanna is orphaned, she is sent to live with her crotchety Aunt Polly. Pollyanna discovers that many of the people in her aunt's New England home town are as ill-tempered as her aunt. But Pollyanna's incurable optimism - exemplified by her "glad game," in which she looks for the bright side of every situation - bring a change to the staid old community.

Amid big-budget medieval pageantry, King Richard goes on the Crusades leaving his brother Prince John as regent, who promptly emerges as a cruel, grasping, treacherous tyrant. Apprised of England's peril by message from his lady-love Marian, the dashing Earl of Huntingdon endangers his life and honor by returning to oppose John, but finds himself and his friends outlawed, and Marian apparently dead. Enter Robin Hood, acrobatic champion of the oppressed, laboring to set things right through swash buckling feats and cliffhanging perils!

Buster is thrown off a train near an amusement park. There he gets a job in a shooting gallery run by the Blinking Buzzards mob. Ordered to kill a businessman, he winds up protecting the man and his daughter by outfitting their home with trick devices.

While caring for his sick daughter, a doctor is called away to the sickbed of a neighbor. He finds the neighbor gravely ill, and ignores his wife's pleas to come home and care for his own daughter, who has taken a turn for the worse.

Buster is a bank clerk. Overturned glue gets everything, mostly the money, stuck to everything else. When robbers show up he can't "stick 'em up" because his hands are stuck in his pockets. The robbers' hideout is a haunted house designed to scare off police.

Ojo and Unc Nunkie are out of food, so they decide to journey to the Emerald City where they will never starve. Along the way, they meet Mewel, a waif and stray (mule) who leads them to Dr. Pipt, who has been stirring the powder of life for nine years. Ojo adds plenty of brains to Margolotte's Patchwork servant before she is brought to life with the powder. When Scraps does come to life, she accidentally knocks the liquid of petrifaction upon Unc Nunkie, Margolotte, and Danx (daughter Jesseva's boyfriend). So all go on separate journeys to find the ingredients to the antidote. (Of course Jesseva has Danx shrunken to take with her, which causes trouble with Jinjur.) Of course, no one ever told Ojo that some of the ingredients were illegal to obtain...