family life

Twelve-year-old Josh, his four-and-a-half-year-old brother Sammy, and his Dad struggle to find their own way to grieve his mothers death after she dies suddenly in an automobile accident but find that sharing memories and being close as a family is what works best.

At age eight, Mikha'el knows he is different from other boys, but over the course of three years as he helps his parents care for his elderly grandfather in Jerusalem, Grandpa teaches Mikha'el to use the gift they share of making other people's dreams sweeter.

Depicts Jacki, a teen-ager, whose life is turned upside down when the depression affects her family. Jacki doesn't understand the things that caused it and is determined to overcome their financial woes and focus on friends and a happy ending.

In 1982 twelve-year-old Vonlai, his parents, and sister Dalah, escape from Laos to a Thai refugee camp where they spend four long years struggling to survive in hopes of one day reaching America.

Ted Merritt still has his childhood imaginary pirate friend named Scurvy Goonda who often gets him into trouble. When they take a trip to an imaginary land ruled by a human-hating cockatoo skeleton, Scurvy is in for a terrible fate.

Kile, almost thirteen, spends much of the summer yearning to explore a nearby island, striving to be a good brother, fishing with an elderly neighbor, and fuming at his parents over their separation that is forcing his mother to sell the family's cabin on a Michigan lake.

Rick, a middle class white boy, finds himself a fish out of water when he spends the summer with the Romero family who live in a barrio in the hills of Santo Domingo, Mexico, for free room and board and help with his Spanish as he works with them to build a house on their land.

In Depression-era Alabama, twelve-year-old Mary Bayliss Pettigrew struggles to understand why her beloved older brother, Leo, died and whether she, miraculously, survived for some special purpose.

In 1936 sixteen-year-old Sophie lives in a crumbling castle in the island kingdom of Montmaray. The rumblings of war seem remote in Montmaray until two German officers land there. Then Sophie, her sister, her cousin, and her uncle must try to hold on to their home.

An old journal seems to be eighth-grader Gracie's ticket to the worlds of magic of which she has read, but her writings not only come true, they have unexpected consequences for her family and her best friend, would-be boyfriend Dylan.