In 1963, Pearl, an eleven-year-old black girl in Fairfax, Virginia, learns about the real nature of friendship from the popular but untrustworthy Lenore, and Artemesia, a poor girl who moves into the neighborhood for a brief time.
While investigating why someone is trying to force people from their homes to expand a recreation center, Sammy is distracted by the lies she must tell to cover an accident she caused, but which was blamed on her nemesis, Heather.
Discarded letters to her absent father brand Sahara as a problem in school. Repeating fifth grade, Sahara encounters Miss Pointy, an unorthodox teacher, who sees the potential Sahara holds. By the end of this delightful story, Sahara knows, too.
Life in a Finnish-American logging community at the turn of the last century in remote Washington state is not easy for a girl with seven brothers, but our only May Amelia has learned that survival requires humor as well as determination.
In the near future, a boy with the ability to speak the language of cats sets out from London to seek his kidnapped parents and finds himself on a Paris-bound circus ship learning to train lions.
Miguel is mortified when Tia Lola comes to the small town where even he doesn’t fit in. Convinced Tia Lola will only make him seem like more of an outsider, he tells his friends she’s a ghost and pretends she doesn’t exist.
