The Boston Globe "Love Letters" columnist and author of Chemistry Lessons follows the experiences of a girl who learns about life and love while on a road trip to scatter her late grandmother's ashes in favorite gardens. When Lori's grandmother dies, her world is turned upside down. Grandma Sheryl raised Lori when Lori's mom got a job out of town. Now Lori's mom is insisting on moving her away from her beloved Boston right before senior year. Desperate...

A teen girl, Aideen, makes a journey from self-protectively tough to ready and willing to face her main problem: her single mother's alcoholism.

"In this powerful collection of short stories, children around the world turn eleven and take a step into their futures. Each one is changed in ways both big and small. Annoyed at having to walk his sister's dog on his birthday, Connor heads into an undeveloped subdivision, where he comes across chilling evidence of a stranger's unhappiness. A girl sneaks away from her class camping trip to a local conservation area and experiences, for the first...

"Seventeen-year-old Evie Beckham has never been interested in dating. She's fully occupied by her love of math and her frequent battles with anxiety. Besides, she's always found the idea of kissing to be kind of weird and pretty unsanitary, when you think about it. But with the help of her therapist and her support system, she's feeling braver. Maybe even brave enough to enter a prestigious physics competition or to say yes to the new boy who's been...

Coretta Scott King Honor author Varian Johnson teams up with rising cartoonist Shannon Wright for a delightful middle-grade graphic novel! Maureen and Francine Carter are twins and best friends. They participate in the same clubs, enjoy the same foods, and are partners on all their school projects. But just before the girls start sixth grade, Francine becomes Fran -- a girl who wants to join the chorus, run for class president, and dress in fashionable...

As Henry finishes fifth grade, his biggest concern is facing a summer with nothing to do. With his best friend, Max, away at summer camp, it's looking so bad he can feel himself "being pulled by the gravitational force of nothingness." But then Henry does something irresponsible, something with real consequences. And suddenly he'd give anything to go back to the nothingness. Has Henry turned into the dingus Max told him not to be? A classic coming-of-age...

A young black boy learns the pain of humiliation and anger when his father is given an unjust jail sentence for stealing a ham from a white man. Learning to read and discovering that things do not die but become part of other things, brings the youngster new hope.

"Mary Anne has never been a leader of the BSC. So when a fight breaks out among the club's four members, Mary Anne feels a little lost, unable to depend on Kristy, Stacey, or Claudia anymore. Sitting by herself in the cafeteria is bad enough; when Mary Anne has to baby-sit a sick child without any help from the club, she knows someone has to take action. It's time for Mary Anne to step in and save the day!"--

"It's Zoey's eighteenth birthmas and the Nerd Herd has been scattered across the country busily adulting for almost a year when Stark calls them back to Tulsa to surprise Z. But all is not well in T-Town. Strange, dark signs are appearing--could it be possible Neferet is stirring? Not willing to chance disaster striking again, Zoey calls on her newly reunited friends to circle with her and add a layer of protection over Neferet's grotto jail. Easy-peasy,...

Young Jethro Creighton grows from a boy to a man when he is left to take care of the family farm in Illinois during the difficult years of the Civil War. A young boy's experiences during the Civil War in the backwoods of southern Illinois. One brother joins the Union forces, the other the Confederacy, and the family is divided. Annotation. The unforgettable story of young Jethro Creighton who comes of age during the turbulent years of the Civil War....