Central Kansas Library System

Written in free verse, explores how three teenagers try to cope with the consequences of their mother's addiction to crystal meth and its effects on their lives.

Devastated, along with her parents, by the death of her older brother and apprehensive about being a freshman in the same high school he attended, fourteen-year-old Cora finds unexpected solace in art.

Sixteen-year-old Valerie, whose boyfriend Nick committed a school shooting at the end of their junior year, struggles to cope with integrating herself back into high school life, unsure herself whether she was a hero or a villain.

The sudden departure of her inseparable friend Julie for California and her own father's unexpected illness challenge many of fourteen-year-old Toni's basic assumptions about friendship and her own happy and secure life.

Zach, Alice, and Poppy, friends from a Pennsylvania middle school who have long enjoyed acting out imaginary adventures with dolls and action figures, embark on a real-life quest to Ohio to bury a doll made from the ashes of a dead girl.

When twelve-year-old Josephine falls through a worm-hole in her garden shed into another time and place, she realizes the troubles she has at home are minor compared to what she has to tackle now in the world where she has landed.

Sunny Lewin is sent to live with her grandfather for the summer in Florida, where she befriends Buzz, a boy completely obsessed with comic books, and faces the secret behind why she is in Florida in the first place.

Matilda Wormwood's father thinks she's a little scab. Matilda's mother spends all afternoon playing bingo. And Matilda's headmistress, Miss Trunchbull? Well, she's the worst of all. She is a big bully, who thinks all her pupils are rotten and locks them in the dreaded chokey. As for Matilda, she's an extraordinary little girl with a magical mind - and now she's had enough. So all these grown-ups had better watch out, because Matilda is going to teach...

Writing poetry helps fifth-grader Harper Lee Morgan cope with her father's absence, being evicted, and having to skip school to care for her brother while their mother works, and things look even brighter after she befriends a mute girl and a kindly disabled woman.

After surviving sixth grade, Rafe expects seventh grade to be a fun zone because he has been accepted to art school in the big city, but when he discovers it is more competitive than he expected, he sets out to turn his boring life into the inspiration for a work of art.