california, southern

"Underprivileged and keenly self-aware, SoCal fourteen-year-old Layla Bailey isn't used to being noticed. Except by mean girls who tweet about her ragged appearance. All she wants to do is indulge in her love of science, protect her vulnerable younger brother, and steer clear of her unstable mother. Then a school competition calls for a biome. Layla chooses her own home, a hostile ecosystem of indoor fungi and secret shame. With a borrowed video camera, she captures it all. The mushrooms growing in her brother's dresser. The black mold blooming up the apartment walls. The unmentionable things living in the dead fridge. All the inevitable exotic toxins that are Layla's life. Then the video goes viral. When Child Protective Services comes to call, Layla loses her family and her home. Defiant, she must face her bullies and friends alike, on her own. Unafraid at last of being seen, Layla accepts the mortifying reality of visibility. Now she has to figure out how to stay whole and stand behind the truth she has shown the world"--OCLC.

With the help of a very special pit bull puppy, twelve-year-old Hannah adjusts to moving from Michigan to California and makes friends, despite the birthmark that makes her self-conscious.

"Mia Tang thinks she's going to have the best year ever. She and her parents are the proud owners of the Calivista Motel, Mia gets to run the front desk with her best friend, Lupe, and she's finally getting somewhere with her writing! But as it turns out, sixth grade is no picnic"--Provided by publisher.

Middle-schooler Bina is having the best time playing in her new band with her friends, Darcy and Enzo. Bina's best friend, Austin, starts developing a crush on her one she is not sure she reciprocates. Now Bina must follow her heart. Can she navigate its twists and turns before the lights come up and the music starts playing? (Companion Novel).

Since Grace was adopted by the Fontaines, she has been carefully taught the art of the scam and has an uncanny ability to create a personality to help her "parents," but their latest job has her questioning everything she has been taught and the family she has grown to love.

Serafina an illegal migrant worker living in California when the police catch her is sent back to Mexico--without her 3 year old daughter. Twelve years later with a pair of silver barretts her only clue to her daughter, Serafina begins a harrowing journey back across the border to find her daughter.

Single mother Christine Scavello turns to private detective Charlie Harrison for help when her young son Joey becomes the target of a fanatical religious group that believes the child to be the Antichrist.

Thirteen-year-old, Southern California surfer Yumi Ruiz-Hirsch is a unique mix of Jewish, Japanese, and Cuban heritage; and when her grandfather, Saul, is diagnosed with terminal cancer, she asks him to tell her his life story in order to better understand her own history.

Recent immigrants from China, desperate for money, ten-year-old Mia Tang's parents take a job managing a rundown Southern California motel for skinflint Mr. Yao, whose son is the only other Chinese American in Mia's class.

"A . . . look at growing up on one of the most secretive weapons installations on earth, by a young woman who came of age with missiles. The China Lake missile range is located in a huge stretch of the Mojave Desert, about the size of the state of Delaware. It was created during the Second World War, and has always been shrouded in secrecy. But people who make missiles and other weapons are regular working people, with domestic routines and everyday dilemmas, and four of them were Karen Piper's parents, her sister, and--when she needed summer jobs--herself . . . Piper sketches in the belief systems--from Amway's get-rich schemes to propaganda in The Rocketeer to evangelism, along with fears of a Lemurian takeover and Charles Manson--that governed their lives. Her memoir is also a search for the truth of the past and what really brought her parents to China Lake with two young daughters . . ."--Provided by publisher.