Wanda mistakes a thornbush for a rosebush in the empty lot. She clears away the trash around it and cares for it every day, even though no roses bloom.
Having no place to play in their run-down inner city Los Angeles neighborhood, twelve-year-old Arturo and the other students in his sixth-grade class raise money and build a park, in the process learning about hard work, creativity, and teamwork.
An inquisitive young boy who lives with his mother and younger sister in a rough housing project in New Haven, Connecticut, approaches his tenth birthday with a mixture of anticipation and worry.
Brother and sister DeMarco and Jasmine Winslow are growing up in the Atlanta ghetto, and when life in the ghetto gets too rough DeMarco commits petty theft to end up in juvie, and Jasmine joins the DIVAs, a rough group of girls.
Two young men raised in the Chicago ghetto tell what life is like for the residents of the city's housing projects, drawing from hours of interviews they conducted for two National Public Radio documentaries, and provide an on-site account of the death of Eric Morse, a little boy dropped out of a fourteenth-floor window.
Presents opposing viewpoints on the increasing problem of inner-city violence, discussing such aspects as drugs, violence against women, gays, and the elderly, and gangs.
DeShawn lives with his poor family in the Frederick Douglass Project. He knows he should stay in school and stay out of the gang life, but that's the only route to money for his family that seems available.
