family problems

Eleven-year-old Whit's zookeeper parents have rarely allowed him to go outside of the Alabama zoo they run, but he stops seeing it as such a cage when he meets "Bird Girl, for whom the place is a refuge from problems at home.

The oldest Mariss brother, fourteen-year-old Dewey, attempts to be the "embodiment of responsibility" as he juggles the management of the family's bicycle repair business while sharing the household and farm duties with his siblings after a sudden energy crisis strands their parents far from home.

Young history teacher Cathy North decides to investigate when her favorite student, Megan Marie, a pretty high school junior, mysteriously disappears.

"All Faith wants is to be loved, to have a stable home and to live without the darkness that led her to heroin addiction and a life on the street. The story starts at the end, as Faith appeals to other kids battling their own issues. She tells them that there is hope and that she herself was pulled back from her ledge by an unlikely champion: the sister who drove her to the streets in the first place."--OCLC.

After a failed suicide attempt, Ellery tries to return the gun she bought to the store and runs into Colter Sawyer, a boy from her school, who does everything he can to prevent her from trying to take her life again.

After a street fights ends with a jail sentence, Yvette is forced to live far from anything and anyone she's ever known, but starting her life over again may show her what it means to have a real family.

Stephanie's relationship with her best friend, Rachel, changes during her first year in junior high as she tries to conceal a family problem and meets a new girl from California.

Sloane Emily Jacobs and Sloane Devon Jacobs, from very different worlds but both with problem families, meet in Montreal where they will stay in the same hotel while attending camp, one for figure skating, the other for ice hockey.

Fifteen-year-old Stevie Calhoun, the daughter of a drug addict who has agreed to go with her aunt Mindy after another one of her mom's disappearances, is confident her mom will return, and wonders if she cares about her friend Alan, school, or anything else that has to do with the life of a normal teenager.

Although she sucks her thumb, smells bad, and loses herself in the make-believe world of the three bears' dollhouse, ten-year-old Fran knows how to take care of her baby sister better than anybody else.