Twelve-year-old House Jackson, team captain and star pitcher of the Aurora County All-Stars, is finally ready to play again after being sidelined for a year with a broken elbow, but a standoff ensues when the team's big game is scheduled for the same day as Aurora County's two-hundredth anniversary pageant--an event directed by the very girl who caused Jackson's injury.
When her quirky grandmother goes to Hawaii for the summer, nine-year-old Ruby learns to survive on her own in Mississippi by writing letters, befriending chickens as well as the new girl in town, and finally coping with her grandfather's death.
Comfort Snowberger is well acquainted with death since her family runs the funeral parlor in their small southern town, but even so the ten-year-old is unprepared for the series of heart-wrenching events that begins on the first day of Easter vacation with the sudden death of her beloved great-uncle Edisto.
In 1964, Joe is pleased that a new law will allow his best friend John Henry, who is African-American, to share the town pool and other public places with him, but he is dismayed to find that prejudice still exists.
When her quirky grandmother goes to Hawaii for the summer, nine-year-old Ruby learns to survive on her own in Mississippi by writing letters, befriending chickens as well as the new girl in town, and finally coping with her grandfather's death.
Comfort Snowberger is well acquainted with death since her family runs the funeral parlor in their small southern town, but even so the ten-year-old is unprepared for the series of heart-wrenching events that begins on the first day of Easter vacation with the sudden death of her beloved great-uncle Edisto.
