eccentrics and eccentricities

Upon moving from Boston to the suburbs, eleven-year-old tomboy Alice meets Zen, a very strange neighbor who is determined to help her become popular when they both begin middle school, although he himself is a loner.

A collection of humorous poems about eccentric characters.

Beverly Hills veterinarian Dr. Mark Albright, having just discovered he is adopted, travels to the small town of DeClare, Oklahoma, in search of his parents, and becomes involved in investigating the murder of his mother in 1972, and his own subsequent disappearance at the age of ten months.

Jake, a budding juvenile delinquent, is sent for home schooling to the arty and eccentric Applewhite family's Creative Academy, where he discovers talents and interests he never knew he had.

Mike, a fourteen-year-old boy with a math learning disability, is sent to rural Pennsylvania for the summer to work on an engineering project, and while his plans to impress his mathematician father fall flat when Mike discovers the project has nothing to do with engineering, he learns much more valuable lessons while working with his eccentric, elderly aunt, a homeless man, and a punk rock girl as part of a town-wide effort to adopt a Romanian orphan.

Beverly Hills veterinarian Dr. Mark Albright, having just discovered he is adopted, travels to the small town of DeClare, Oklahoma, in search of his parents, and becomes involved in investigating the murder of his mother in 1972, and his own subsequent disappearance at the age of ten months.

Otto, Lucia, and Max Hardscrabble, whose mother has been missing for many years, have unexpected and illuminating adventures in the village of Snoring-by-the-Sea after their father, who paints portraits of deposed monarchs, goes away on a business trip.

Upon learning that her deceased mother, an artist, went through a "Purple Period," ten-year-old Noonie decides to do the same, hoping that this will bring her archaeologist father home to see her win a school art contest and that the aunt, uncle, and cousin she lives with will come to understand her just a little.

When his retired parents buy a group of tourist cabins on Cape Cod, fifteen-year-old Kenyon Baker's days are filled with repair work until he becomes friends with an eccentric girl and makes her the subject of a series of photographs.