juvenile fiction

Writing poetry helps fifth-grader Harper Lee Morgan cope with her father's absence, being evicted, and having to skip school to care for her brother while their mother works, and things look even brighter after she befriends a mute girl and a kindly disabled woman.

Sylvia Patterson's life suddenly changes with the integration of Little Rock's Central High in 1957 when she is selected to be one of the first black students to attend the previously all white school.

Gerald, a teenager who has spent years protecting his fragile half-sister from their abusive father, must face the prospect of one final confrontation before the problem can be solved.

While seeking the seven magical coins that will allow him to reach his father, who is trapped in the castle of Vlad Tepes, Sam Faulkner travels to such places as ancient Delphi, a Stone Age cave, and 1930s Chicago.

After returning from summer camp, where they learned all about being cool, eighth-graders Stacy and Lydia are excited to start school and become popular, but are surprised to learn that their friend Kelly is the one who is accepted into the "in crowd" and they are the only two students not invited to a bar miztvah--which they intend to crash.

Corydon, a young shepherd boy, is cast out of his village and captured by a monster who puts him on display with Medusa, the Minotaur, the Sphinx, and other classical beasts; but after Corydon helps them to escape, they join forces to fight for their survival and for their home.

A homeless boy on the streets of Haiti joins other street children, and together they build a home and a radio station where they can care for themselves and for other homeless children.

Fourteen-year-old Jack Perdu, a prodigy of classical mythology, suffers a near-fatal accident after which he meets Euri, a young ghost who introduces him to New York's ghostly underworld, eight levels below Grand Central Station, where Jack decides to look for his mother who disappeared years earlier.

Fearing that the sinister Lord Ombra was not destroyed, Peter and Molly travel to the land of Rundoon, which is ruled by the evil King Zarboff.

Long before the sun even thinks of rising the Haitian children run to school where they learn the letters, sounds, and words of their beautiful books.