illinois

As letters flow back and forth--between the prairies of Illinois and the mountains of Afghanistan, across cultural and religious divides--sixth-grader Abby, ten-year-old Amira, and eleven-year-old Sadeed begin to speak and listen to each other.

Mitch Bornstein has spent twenty years as a horse trainer working with damaged, abused, and difficult horses. In that time he thought he had met just about every kind of dangerous horse there is. But he was wrong. When he met a former American wild mustang named Samson, who hated everyone and everything and wasn't afraid to show it, he knew he had a problem. Samson had lost his freedom six years ago but still acted as the wild stallion he had been, and because of abuse suffered at the hands of previous owners, he was thought to be untrainable. But Bornstein eventually bonded with Samson over the course of a year, and learned to appreciate the greatness of a wild American mustang.

A boy recounts his annual summer trips to rural Illinois with his sister during the Great Depression to visit their larger-than-life grandmother.

As letters flow back and forth--between the prairies of Illinois and the mountains of Afghanistan, across cultural and religious divides--sixth-grader Abby, ten-year-old Amira, and eleven-year-old Sadeed begin to speak and listen to each other.

The author shares the story of the life-transforming journey she took with her mother, Edith, to Germany in an attempt to help Edith rediscover the culture, traditions, and friends lost when she was sent by her parents to America in 1938 to protect her from the Nazi onslaught.

Joey and his younger sister, Mary Alice, who live in Prohibition-era Chicago, travel to a rural part of Illinois to visit their tough and vivacious Grandma Dowdel, who concocts outlandish schemes against various members of her small-town community.

Twelve-year-old Frankie Joe Huckaby, forced to live with the father he never knew, a stepmother, and four half-brothers in Illinois, starts a delivery service to finance his escape back to his mother in Texas, not realizing he is making a better life for himself than he ever had with her.

Told from two viewpoints, Derek Fitzpatrick, kicked out of school, must move with his stepmother to her childhood home in Illinois, where he meets Ashtyn Parker, who may be able to earn a football scholarship with Derek's help.

Abraham Lincoln's success as a politician was rooted in experience in the courtroom. Despite a presidency plagued with moral and legal crises, this self-taught prairie lawyer deftly led the nation by relying on the core principles he honed in his early career: honestly, self-discipline, and a powerful sense of social responsibility. Aspiring and practicing lawyers alike often looked to Lincoln for guidance and his hard-won wisdom is as relevant today as ever.