"A boy keeps a toy dinosaur in his pocket to help him be brave like his dad--but when the dinosaur goes missing, Dad knows just what to do"--

"The story of Sequoyah and the creation of the Cherokee syllabary, as told by his thirteen year old son"--

"When a teacher asks the children in her class to think about what makes their families special, the answers are all different in many ways -- but the same in the one way that matters most of all. One child is worried that her family is just too different to explain, but listens as her classmates talk about what makes their families special. One is raised by a grandmother, and another has two dads. One is full of stepsiblings, and another has a new...

"After Sharkey's best friend commits suicide (or was it an accident?) in front of him, he spends the summer processing his grief on an abandoned beach resort island where his dad is the caretaker"-- Three years ago JC (aka Sharkey) saw his best friend fall off a unfinished Manhattan skyscraper. Suicide, or accident? He's spent the past years withdrawing from his friends, obsessively watching documentaries, and texting his dead friend. This year...

For Bixby Alexander Tam (nicknamed Bat), life tends to be full of surprises -- some of them good, some not so good. Today, though, is a good-surprise day. Bat's mom, a veterinarian, has brought home a baby skunk, which she needs to take care of until she can hand him over to a wild-animal shelter. But the minute Bat meets the kit, he knows they belong together. And he's got one month to show his mom that a baby skunk might just make a pretty terrific...

Upon her mother's death, Wavie Conley, eleven, must go live with a scheming aunt in the Kentucky town her mother left behind. Right before Wavie's mother died, she said: Be brave, Wavie B! You got as much right to a good life as anybody, so find it! But little did Wavie's mom know that events would conspire to bring Wavie back to Conley Hollow, the Appalachian hometown her mother tried to leave behind. Now Wavie's in the clutches of her Aunt Samantha...