REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE!

Okay, here's the deal. I need help identifying a couple things that I remember from childhood but I cannot remember their titles at all. Ten points and muffin to whoever can help me identify one or more of the following:

The first one is a book. No idea title or author or we wouldn't be in this mess, of course. I can't even properly recall when I may have read this book or if it was read to me. I am almost certain it was on a summer reading list of some sort. Anyway, from what I recall the book starts off with a boy who gets injured falling out of a tree or onto a rock, or both. All of a sudden he begins to shrink. The doctor says he injured a specific organ or gland that's making him grow backwards. He's not unmaturing, he's just shrinking. I don't really remember what prompts the next bit but he makes friends with a bird and his father or someone builds a little cockpit so he can ride the bird on some quest that he has to go on. He has a little sword that has a drop of poison or knock out juice or something in it and flies on this bird to some citadel or tower or house along the coast I think. There he infiltrates the building and obtains whatever it is he was there to obtain but not before stabbing the person there in the wrist with his tiny knockout sword. That's pretty much all I remember of that one.

The second item on the list is a TV show. A cartoon to be specific. I was reminded of it while watching a Thunderbirds clip on the interwebs. This particular cartoon was a lot like Thunderbirds in the sense that it had multiple ships and stuff. There was a blue rocket ship and some sort of space plan ship and a crawler type ship. I think there were four or five ships. But they all connected together to form mega ship or something. They would go off and rescue people in space who needed rescuing. In the only episode I remember they fly off to rendezvous with some sort of space freighter or space liner because it's power core is about to explode and they have to cut out the power core before it does that. I remember more about the video store where I rented the VHS (oh man remember video stores?!) than I do about the show.

So there you have it. I've tried to search the interwebs for it but can't seem to find anything of either.