Fourteen-year-old LaVaughn, trying to earn the money for college, takes a job caring for the two children of Jolly, a single teenage mom, and must find the courage to make the right decision for all of them after Jolly is fired.
Having moved out of the housing project and into a new home along with his mother and sister, ten-year-old Junebug discovers that bullies are everywhere and that the elderly can make great friends.
When sixteen-year-old Monica and her widowed father go back to Los Angeles, reluctantly moving from a wealthy neighborhood to the barrio house her mother grew up in, Monica tries to locate a missing neighbor, and in the process learns about her mother's past.
Fourteen-year-old Lincoln Mendoza, an aspiring basketball player, must come to terms with his divided loyalties and deal with a problematic coach when he moves from the Hispanic inner city of San Francisco to an affluent white suburb.
Nine-year-old Katie and her four-year-old brother, Tyler, have an emotional summer during which their father considers moving them to Portland and they are surprised by a visit from their mother, a country singer.
When he is assigned Teddy Roosevelt as his biography project in school, fourth-grader Riley finds himself inspired by Roosevelt's tenacity and perseverance and resolves to find a way to get what he most wants--a saxophone and music lessons.
Uses children's drawings and comments about their personal situations to invite readers to express, explore, and understand some of the issues and feelings associated with living in a single-parent home.
