poverty

In the early 1960s, twelve-year-old songwriter Livy Two Weems dreams of seeing the world beyond the Maggie Valley, North Carolina, holler where she lives in poverty with her parents and eight brothers and sisters, but understands that she must put family first.

Bullied at school and neglected by her poor, self-absorbed, single mother at home, high school junior Noelle finally reaches the breaking point after a classmate commits suicide.

Angry and humiliated when his sharecropper father is jailed for stealing food for his family, a young black boy grows in courage and understanding with the help of the devoted dog Sounder, and also by learning to read.

When Maria comes to live in the poorhouse, she wants terribly to bring happiness and beauty to the lives of the people who live there.

In Amsterdam in the mid-1600s, Cornelia's life as the illegitimate child of renowned painter Rembrandt is marked by plague, poverty, and despair at ever earning her father's love, until she sees hope for a better future in the eyes of a wealthy suitor.

Features the tale of a pretty young girl driven to brutal excesses by poverty and loneliness, and includes four additional short stories by Crane.

When eighth-grade school bully Tod and his friends get caught committing a crime on school property, his penalty--staying after school and writing in a journal under the eye of the school guidance counselor--reveals aspects of himself that he prefers to keep hidden.

Heaven, her brother Tom, and the younger children of the Casteel family cling to their pride despite being the poorest family in the hills. When their stepmother leaves, their father's scheme threatens to destroy Heaven and the other children forever.

The author shares what he has learned about global poverty through visits to more than one hundred countries, and presents his plan for ending extreme poverty around the world by the year 2025.