single-parent families

Twelve-year-old boys living in a rough part of New York confront questions about what it means to be a friend, a father, and a man.

Emphasizes that strong family units come in different shapes and sizes, focusing on single-parent families and the challenges they face.

Just as sixteen-year-old Josie and her mother finally begin trusting men enough to start dating seriously, the father Josie never knew comes back to town and shakes up what was already becoming a difficult mother-daughter relationship.

Twelve-year-old Olive, an only child who lives with her high-powered lawyer-mother in a ramshackle house at the beach in Australia, does not fit in at the Joanne d'Arc School for Girls, so when her best friend drops her for a more popular girl and Olive suddenly meets her own, more confident twin sister, the two of them go in search of their long-lost father.

Eleven-year-old Felix becomes a bat boy for a minor league baseball team, hoping to someday be like his father, a famous Cuban outfielder.

Sixteen-year-old Londoner Lucas Swain, left in possession of the ashes of Violet Park, becomes convinced that Violent is communicating with him, initiating a voyage of self-discovery that forces him to finally confront the events surrounding his father's sudden disappearance.

Sixteen-year-old Carlos Duarte is on the verge of realizing his dream of becoming a famous make-up artist, but first he must face his jealous boss at a Macy's cosmetics counter, his sister's abusive boyfriend, and his crush on a punk-rocker classmate.

While investigating the murder of her English teacher, seventeen-year-old Cameryn Mahoney, who works as assistant coroner for her father, begins a romance with the most popular guy in school, awaits the arrival of her long-missing mother, and puts her life in danger.

When New York City fourteen-year-old Corina impulsively reveals incriminating information about her multi-billionaire father, he replaces her unlimited funds with an antiquated cell phone, a Metrocard, and a twenty-dollar weekly allowance.

Creative, intelligent, nine-year-old Mina keeps a journal in her own disorderly way that reveals how her mind is growing into something extraordinary, especially after she begins homeschooling under the direction of her widowed mother.