While her father is looking for a homestead in the Dakotas, Addie and her mother and brothers spend the summer with her aunt and uncle in Sabula, Iowa, where she rescues her best friend during a flood and where her baby sister is born.
When sent to live on a farm in Iowa as an alternative to juvenile detention, seventeen-year-old Cosmos falls in love with a religious girl and reconsiders his values and beliefs.
The author draws upon her six years of teaching 8-12-year-olds of delayed reading proficiency in the University of Iowa summer reading program to outline a workshop format for instructing children with a wide range of reading abilities.
As sixteen-year-old Ellie pursues her two goals--growing the biggest pumpkin in Iowa and losing twenty pounds herself--she strengthens her relationship with her father and meets a young man with interests similar to her own.
Chronicles the efforts of Iowa high school seniors Jay Borschel and Dan LeClere to become four-time state wrestling champions, following them through the 2004-05 school year to the four-day Iowa State High School Wrestling Tournament, and on to college at Virginia Tech.
Tugs Button's cousin Ned wants to be a football player, and although his size and a bully who keeps him and his friends out of their games stand in the way, Ned's eccentric Grandpa Ike and his own ability may give him his chance.
In 1948, nine-year-old Katy Sue's mother dies suddenly, and she and her family spend the next year trying to recover from their loss, assisted by her Aunt Katherine, who quits her teaching job to help out on their Iowa farm.
In Iowa circa 1929, spunky twelve-year-old Tugs vows to turn her family's luck around, with the help of a Brownie camera and a small-town mystery that only she can solve.
