Kroll, Virginia L

Ten-year-old Rachael describes how her twenty-year-old sister's schizophrenia has affected the family and expresses her own feelings of sadness and anger.

When six-year-old Hannah's beloved goldfish dies after a relatively long life, she seeks comfort from her older brother Seth.

Denise visits her grandmother, a wildlife rehabilitator in the Louisiana bayou, and helps heal and free an injured bird.

After talking about heroes and martyrs at school, a young girl gets a first-hand look at heroism when her father and several others protect their neighbor from a group of racists.

Dalila tries to do various kinds of dances including the jig, country western, ballet, and tap, before she finally finds the kind perfect for her.

Brianna is excited about playing the lead in her school's Thanksgiving Day play, but when a terrible coughing fit sends her to the emergency room the Friday before the show, she learns that she has asthma and how to control it.

Rhyming text celebrates the many things that boys can achieve.

At Christmas, Marta, a Polish girl, unhesitatingly breaks off pieces of her own blessed Nativity straw to share with her ill grandmother and other humble villagers, and in giving them away, her blessings return to her.

Relates in rhyming text the many ways we use our hands.

Janetta, intrigued by the paper animals her neighbor Mrs. Tsujimoto makes, learns the art of origami and becomes Mrs. Tsujimoto's hands when her arthritis makes it difficult for her to continue.