poverty

After her father's landscaping business fails and the family loses their house, sixth-grader Griselda Zaragoza follows her sister's example and begins selling Alma cosmetics while hiding her changed circumstances from friends.

"Why does this land of plenty allow one in every eight of its children to go without basic necessities, permit scores of its citizens to live and die on the streets, and authorize its corporations to pay poverty wages? . . . Sociologist Matthew Desmond draws on history, research, and original reporting to show how affluent Americans knowingly and unknowingly keep poor people poor. . . . This book gives us new ways of thinking about a morally urgent problem. It also helps us imagine solutions"--Provided by publisher.

"A biracial girl living in post-apartheid South Africa is determined to unveil the mystery of her white mother's hidden past"--Provided by publisher.

"In the early 2000s, thirteen-year-old Katie Wingate has moved more times that she can count, for as long as she can remember. There were the slow moves where you see the whole thing coming. There were the fast ones where you grab what you can in seconds. When Katie and her family come back from an out-of-town funeral, they discover their landlord has unceremoniously evicted them, forcing them to pack lightly and move quickly. They make their way to an Extended Stay America Motel, with Katie's mother promising it's temporary. Within the four walls of their new home, Katie and her siblings, Josh and Haley, try to live a normal life-all while wondering if things would be easier living with their father. Lyrical and forthcoming, Katie navigates the complexities that come with living in-between: in between homes, parents, and childhood and young adulthood, all while remaining hopeful for the future.".

Sang Ly lives at Cambodia's city dump where survival is a daily struggle, but when she develops an unlikely friendship with the ill-tempered rent collector, Sopeap, who teaches her to read, Sang embarks on a life-changing journey to give her son, Nisay, a better life and future.

In 1933, when twelve-year-old Hallie Turner and her brothers, Tom and Benny, take to the road seeking whatever work they can get, they find kindness in small-town Kansas.

"It's June's first day at Huey House, and...[she] can't bring her cherished viola inside. Before the accident last year, her dad saved tip money for a year to buy her viola, and she's not about to give it up now. Tyrell has been at Huey House for three years and gives June a glimpse of the good things about living there: friendship, hot meals, and a classical musician next door. Can he and June work together to oppose the government, or will families be forced out of Huey House before they are ready?"--Provided by publisher.

"Rex [Ogle] captures and celebrates the powerful presence [of] a woman he could always count on--to give him warm hugs and ear kisses, to teach him precious words in Spanish, to bring him to the library where he could take out as many books as he wanted, and to offer safety when darkness closed in. Throughout a coming of age marked by violence and dysfunction, Abuela's red-brick house in Abilene, Texas, offered Rex the possibility of home, and Abuela herself the possibility for a better life. 'Abuela, Don't Forget Me' is a . . . portrait of the transformative and towering woman who believed in Rex even when he didn't yet know how to believe in himself"--Provided by publisher.

After the ice cream stand where she works is robbed, seventeen-year-old Minerva Guti?rrez plans to get revenge on her predatory boss while navigating grief, anger, and dreams of escape from her dead-end hometown.

"Taking readers from 1920s France to postwar Shanghai and through the Chinese Cultural Revolution, this compelling family saga follows Ah-Mei and her grandmother, who share a rare bond that gives them the strength to carry on when their family is left with almost nothing"--Provided by publisher.