Twelve-year-old Sarny's brutal life as a slave becomes even more dangerous when a newly arrived slave offers to teach her how to read. Sarny, a female slave at the Waller plantation, first sees Nightjohn when he is brought there with a rope around his neck, his body covered in scars. He had escaped north to freedom, but he came back--came back to teach reading. Knowing that the penalty for reading is dismemberment Nightjohn still retumed to slavery...

"Instead of being rescued from a plane crash, as in the author's book Hatchet, this story portrays what would have happened to Brian had he been forced to survive a winter in the wilderness with only his survival pack and hatchet"--Title verso page.

A fourteen-year-old Eskimo boy who feels assailed by the modernity of his life takes a 1400-mile journey by dog sled across ice, tundra, and mountains seeking his own "song" of himself.

In 1848, while on a wagon train headed for Oregon, fourteen-year-old Francis Tucket is kidnapped by Pawnee Indians and then falls in with a one-armed trapper who teaches him how to live in the wild.

As Christmas 1943 approaches, a preschool boy inadvertently makes 2 weighty discoveries that provide a poignant emotional reading experience. When a young boy and his mother spend the holiday in Minnesota with his cousin who is dying, a Christmas miracle restores both children's faith in the spirit of the season.

Six misfits get stuck together in a middle school restroom and discover friendship. Includes playscript of the story.

"A priceless, handcrafted rifle, fired throughout the American Revolution, is passed down through the years until it fires on a fateful Christmas Eve of 1994"--Title verso page.

A teenager left on his own travels west in a kit car he built himself, and along the way picks up two Vietnam veterans, who take him on an eye-opening journey.

A boy runs away from home and his drunken parents and spends his sixteenth summer learning about life as a migrant laborer, and carnival worker.

During World War II, a little boy is sent to live with his grandma, a cook in a camp for workers building a road through the wilderness.