single-parent families

In poor, rural Georgia in 1927, twelve-year-old Carrisa and her suspicious mama take in an elderly drifter with a shiny bicycle, never expecting how profoundly his wise and patient ways will affect them.

On the first Hanukkah after Mama died, Papa and his two daughters try to make latkes and celebrate without her.

After she, her older brother, and their father move from Chicago to Maryland, Alice has trouble fitting into her new third grade class, but with the help of some new friends and her own unique outlook, she survives.

A girl tells how her mother decided to become a single parent and traveled overseas to adopt her and describes their happy life as a family.

Music entwines Kira, a thirteen-year-old singer who hates that her father makes her perform for money on New York City subway platforms; Eugene, the class clown; and Jake, who longs to sing and to approach Kira, but feels held back by his stuttering.

In 1945 Russia, those who own German shepherds are considered traitors, but thirteen-year-old Mikhail and his family are determined to keep the dog a dying man brought them, while his classmate Katia strives to learn his secret.

In 1929 England, eleven-year-old Johnny Swanson helps his widowed mother by starting a newspaper advertising scam, which leads him to a real-life murder mystery that places his mother in mortal danger.

Growing up near Boston with her free-spirited mother and old-world grandfather, twelve-year-old Emma has always felt out of place but when she attends the family reunion her father's family holds annually in Wisconsin, she is in for some surprises.

The residents of Culpepper, despite their grand aspirations, have made little progress toward achieving their goals, but unexpected events and surprises put the ambitions of the residents of Culpepper to the test.

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.