Central Kansas Library System

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.

"On the sharp crags of tiny Tillings Island lies the secret of Izabella Rae Haywood's sixth birthday. That night, her father vanished, taking her voice, and the truth of what really happened along with him"-- Tillings Island, Rhode Island, witnessed the biggest event of Izabella Rae Haywood's life. On her sixth birthday her father left... and took her voice with him. Eight years later in the summer of 1974, Iz and her mother board the ferry to Tillings...

For most of her eleven years, Delly has been in trouble without knowing why, until her little brother, RB, and a strange, silent new friend, Ferris, help her find a way to be good--and happy---again. Can friendship save you? The day Ferris Boyd moves to town, Delly Pattison is sure a special surpresent (a present that is a surprise) is on its way. Instead, Delly ends up in even more trouble than usual. The Boyds' arrival in River Bluffs means big...

"FBI Special Agent Kimberly Quincy and Sergeant Detective D.D. Warren have built a task force to follow the digital bread crumbs left behind by deceased serial kidnapper Jacob Ness. When a disturbing piece of evidence is discovered in the hills of Georgia, they bring Flora Dane and true-crime savant Keith Edgar to a small town where something seems to be deeply wrong. What at first looks like a Gothic eeriness soon hardens into something much more...

A blind outlaw horse is tamed by a boy who can not speak.

Twelve-year-old Trey and his seven-year-old brother Lou, who does not speak, cross the barrier between two worlds, that of their island in the Bahamas, and a land called Pangaia, and play a mysterious role in restoring the natural environment in both places.

An old man who makes dolls breaks through the loneliness of a young boy who doesn't speak.

Chang, a mute Chinese boy whose father uses cormorants to fish, is pleased when he is finally old enough to help with the Big Catch and the raising of a new bird.

"Connor is sure his best friend, Branwell, couldn't have hurt Branwell's baby half sister, Nikki. But Nikki lies in a coma, and Branwell is in a juvenile behavioral center, suspected of a horrible crime and unable to utter the words to tell what really happened. Connor is the only one who might be able to break through Branwell's wall of silence. But how can he prove Branwell didn't commit the unspeakable act of which he's accused - when Branwell...

Ten-year-old Manami does not realize how peaceful her life on Bainbridge Island, Washington, is until the day it all changes. It's 1942, shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, and Manami and her family are forced by the government to leave their home by the sea and join other Japanese Americans at a prison camp in the California desert. Manami is sad to go, but, even worse, her family must give her dog, Yujiin, to a neighbor to take care...