dysfunctional families

With her unstable, alcoholic mother, sixteen-year-old Isabelle moves from one dingy apartment to the next while trying to care for her younger siblings. Things go from bad to worse when Isabelle gets on the wrong side of a popular girl at her new school. And although she doesn't really have time for romance, she realizes she's falling for a boy named Will, which only complicates things.

Although he is the best linebacker in town, Tony must make a difficult choice between continuing to play football and helping his family when his mother loses one of her two jobs, his younger brother starts to go astray, and Tony himself is struggling to pass his math class.

"In Makersville, Indiana, people know all about fifteen-year-old Ronney--he's from that mixed-race family with the dad who tried to kill himself, the pill-popping mom, and the genius kid sister. Can Ronney figure out a way to hold it together as all his worlds fall apart?"--Provided by publisher.

Two years after the shooting death of thirteen-year-old Mann's little brother, Mann's father, who believes his son died because he made him too "soft," takes Mann and his friend camping and abandons them in an attempt to make them tough.

A story in free verse poetry in which Marcus, a boy from the inner city who suffers bullying, is grieving his sister's death, and has been labeled a troublemaker finds a way to cope with his anger with the help of an unlikely mentor, who teaches him to play chess.

It is 1983 and Vanessa Martin, a thirteen-year-old African American girl in Newark's public housing, dreams of following in the footsteps of the first black Miss America, Vanessa Williams; but the odds are against her until a new teacher at school organizes a beauty pageant and encourages Vanessa to enter.

"Eleven-year-old Makeda dreams of meeting her African American mother, while coping with serious problems in her white adopted family, a cross-country move, and being homeschooled"--Provided by publisher.

"From age six through her high school valedictory speech, believing she and her mother are wizards helps young Echo cope with poverty, hunger, her mother's drug abuse, and much more"--Provided by publisher.

"A newbie to the track team, Patina "Patty" Jones must learn to rely on her family and teammates as she tries to outrun her personal demons"--Provided by publisher.

Isolated from friends who believe the worst because she has not been truthful with them, sixteen-year-old Annabel finds an ally in classmate Owen, whose honesty and passion for music help her to face and share what really happened at the end-of-the-year party that changed her life. Presented in Spanish.