Central Kansas Library System

A black family of five moves into an enormous house once used as a hiding place for runaway slaves. Mysterious sounds and events as well as the discovery of secret passageways make the family believe they are in grave danger.

Just when twelve-year-old Summer thinks nothing else can possibly go wrong in a year of bad luck, an emergency takes her parents to Japan, leaving Summer to care for her little brother while helping her grandmother cook and do laundry for harvest workers.

Kenny Wright is a kid with a secret identity. In his mind he's Stainlezz Steel, superpowered defender of the weak. In reality he's a chess club devotee known as a grandma's boy, a label that makes him an easy target for bullies. Kenny wants to bring a little more Steel to the real world, but the question is: Can he recognize his own true strength before peer pressure forces him to make the worst choice of his life?

In 1904, twelve-year-old Orphelia follows her dream by running away from home to join an all-black minstrel show headed for the Saint Louis World's Fair, and learns about her family's troubled past in the process.

Twelve-year-old Elspeth Monro, a Scottish settler and weaver's apprentice on the North Carolina frontier in 1775, must find out who is betraying her Loyalist family during the months before the start of the Revolutionary War.

With the end of the Civil War in 1865, Addy desperately hopes that her family will be reunited in freedom in Philadelphia, but the future may hold both happiness and heartache. Addy Walker is a proud, courageous girl growing up in 1864, during the midst of the Civil War. Addy's stories tell of her daring escape with her mother from slavery, and the challenges they face afterward as they try to reunite their family. But Addy's stories are about much...

In the year 1864, young Addy & her mother try to escape slavery by fleeing to the North after her father is sold again & they are separated. After their escape from North Carolina to Philadelphia in the summer of 1864, Addy and her mother begin their new life as free people as her mother gets a paying job and Addy goes to school and learns a lesson in true friendship. Addy Walker is a proud, courageous girl growing up in 1864, during the midst of...

In 1864, after her father and brother are sold to another owner, nine-year-old Addy Walker and her mother escape from their cruel life of slavery in North Carolina to freedom in Philadelphia.

On a Minnesota farm in the mid 1800's, the hard working members of the Larson family find time to celebrate Kirsten's tenth birthday.

In the spring of 1865, Addy finds inspiration from a new friend and chooses a birthday for herself as she and her parents try to shape a new life of freedom in Philadelphia despite the racial prejudice they encounter throughout the city.