Challenged Children's Books

On her way home from school, Pearl finds an unusual bone that has unexpected powers.

Chibi's classmates come to appreciate his special knowledge and talent.

A young boy discusses his divorced father's new living situation, in which the father and his gay roommate share eating, doing chores, playing, loving, and living.

Through a series of questions to which the reader must answer yes or no, the personality and occupation of a lady called Daisy O'Grady are revealed.

A poem for each letter of the alphabet introduces a different, spooky aspect of Halloween.

When Heather goes to playgroup, at first she feels bad because she has two mothers and no father, but then she learns that there are lots of different kinds of families and the most important thing is that all the people love each other.

A little boy's dream-fantasy in which he helps three fat bakers get milk for their cake batter.

A little boy in India loses his fine new clothes to the tigers, but while they dispute who is the grandest tiger in the jungle he takes his fine clothes back again.

Two children explain to their parents, using their own drawings, where babies come from.

When Strega Nona leaves him alone with her magic pasta pot, Big Anthony is determined to show the townspeople how it works.

The Stupids are a nice, typical, suburban American family except for one thing. None of them has the sense God gave a lemon. When Stanley Stupid discovers that someone has swiped the Stupid family garbage right off their curb, he decides to take matters into his own bumbling hands and catch the evil litter looter himself.

A naughty little boy, sent to bed without his supper, sails to the land of the wild things where he becomes their king.

The reader follows Waldo as he hikes around the world and must try to find him in the illustrations of some of the crowded places he visits.

The adventures and pranks of a mischievous boy growing up in a 19th-century Mississippi River town as he plays hooky on an island, witnesses a crime, hunts for pirate's treasure, and becomes lost in a cave.

While planning a wedding as part of an assignment for her eighth-grade health class, Alice thinks about her father's and older brother's love lives and learns that you cannot prepare for all of life's decisions.

Seventh grader Alice decides that the only way to stave off personal and social disasters is to be part of the crowd, especially the "in" crowd, no matter how boring and, potentially, difficult.

A government decree allows each family only two children. For Luke, a third child, this has meant a lifetime of hiding. But could a stray glimpse of a child hiding in the house across the way lead to freedom?

In a future where the law limits a family to only two children, third-born Luke has been in hiding for the entire twelve years of his life, until he enters boarding school under an assumed name and is forced to face his fears.

Twelve-year-old Anastasia has a series of disastrous experiences when, expecting to get a job as a lady's companion, she is hired instead to be a maid.

Anastasia's 10th year has some good things like falling in love and really getting to know her grandmother and some bad things like finding out about an impending baby brother.

Faced with the difficulties of growing up and choosing a religion, an eleven-year-old girl talks over her problems with her own private God.

(A Series of Unfortunate Events,#5) As their outrageous misfortune continues, the Baudelaire orphans are shipped off to a miserable boarding school, where they befriend the two Quagmire triplets and find that they have been followed by the dreaded Count Olaf.

When sixth graders Mikey and Margalo devise a plan to prevent Mikey's parents from getting a divorce, the two friends find their scheme foiled by a new girl at school.

(A Series of Unfortunate Events,#1) After the sudden death of their parents, the three Baudelaire children must depend on each other and their wits when it turns out that the distant relative who is appointed their guardian is determined to use any means necessary to get their fortune.

In 1849, twelve-year-old California Morning, who renames herself Lucy, is distraught when her mother moves the family from Massachusetts to a rough California mining town.

Ten-year-old India Opal Buloni describes her first summer in the town of Naomi, Florida, and all the good things that happen to her because of her big ugly dog Winn-Dixie.

Cousins living in a Virginia coal town have both experienced the loss of someone dear to them. Through the stories they tell each other and the adventures they share, they learn to look beyond grief and imagine better lives for themselves.

As she struggles to cope with a difficult mother and finding her place in the world, young Nealy Compton finds solace in the relative solitude and safety beneath her neighbor's porch.

Living in Newfoundland, fifteen-year-old David meets a mysterious new girl named Nancy and makes a startling discovery while doing research for a school project on the Beothuck Indians.

When her aunt and uncle take her from New Mexico to Lugano, Switzerland, to attend an international school, thirteen-year-old Dinnie discovers her world expanding.

Jill goes along with the rest of the fifth-grade class in tormenting a classmate and then finds out what it's like when she, too, becomes a target.

David receives a curse from an elderly woman he has helped his schoolmates attack, and he learns to regret his weakness in pandering to others for the sake of popularity before new friends and a very nice girl help him to be a stronger, more assertive person.

Ten-year-old Jesse Aarons, who has lived all his life on a farm in Virginia, becomes friends with Leslie Burke, a "city girl" who has moved into a farmhouse down the road and opens doors to culture and imaginative play. But then tragedy strikes.

The Chief's son, Mafutu, sets out on a voyage of discovery with his faithful dog, Uri, and finds his courage after being driven out of his village for showing fear.

When the freighter on which they are traveling is torpedoed by a German submarine during World War II, a teenage white boy, blinded by a blow on the head, and an old Black man are stranded on a tiny Caribbean island where the boy acquires a new kind of vision, courage, and love from his old companion.

A family trip to Mexico changes a cocky sixteen-year-old boys attitudes as he becomes exposed to his brother's consuming interest in saving endangered species, to his parents' problems, and to his own selfishness.

A poor boy wins a tour of a chocolate factory and a supply of chocolate.

The story of Wilbur, the pig, smallest of the litter, who is raised by the farmer's daughter, and who finds a friend in Charlotte, the spider.

Alone in his apartment during Christmas vacation, eleven-year-old Eric finds himself caught in a battle between a strange exterminator and the rat he wants to kill.

Angie and her new friends in the "in-crowd" take a canoe trip to the isolated Shadow Island, and when a storm destroys their canoes, the group discovers they're helplessly trapped in the wilderness with a murderer in their midst.

The summer that Hattie turns twelve, she meets the childlike uncle she never knew and becomes friends with a girl who works at the carnival that comes to Hattie's small town.

After attempting to save his ex-babysitter from wife abuse, Cracker Jackson gains an adult insight into the sadness of failed heroics.

As he tries to come to terms with his mother's death, Vernon finds solace in his growing relationship with the neighborhood outcasts, an alcoholic and her developmentally disabled son.

Falsely accused of theft and murder, an orphaned peasant boy in fourteenth-century England flees his village and meets a larger-than-life juggler who holds a dangerous secret.

Explains superstitions about such topics as love and marriage, money, ailments, travel, the weather, and death.

Recounts curses on families, creatures, places, wanderers, and ghosts. Also describes amulets and talismans which provide protection.

Poems that reflect on the poet's love of food and eating

Shipped off to relatives in Oregon while his father is touring with his rock band, twelve-year-old Eli comes to love the magnificent trees of a nearby old growth forest and tries to prevent their imminent destruction by clear-cutting loggers.

(A Series of Unfortunate Events,#6)The woeful saga of the Baudelaire orphans continues as evil Count Olaf discovers their whereabouts at Esme Squalor's seventy-one bedroom penthouse and concocts a new plan for stealing their family fortune.

When he decides to turn his fifth grade teacher's love of the dictionary around on her, clever Nick Allen invents a new word and begins a chain of events that quickly moves beyond his control.

Claudia and her brother run away to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she sees a statue so beautiful, she must identify its sculptor. To find out, she must visit the statue's former owner, the elderly Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler.

Lame and suddenly orphaned, Kira is mysteriously removed from her squalid village to live in the palatial Council Edifice, where she is expected to use her gifts as a weaver to do the bidding of the all-powerful Guardians.

George decides that his grumpy, selfish old grandmother must be a witch and concocts some marvelous medicine to take care of her.

Each of the girls in a middle-school clique reveals the strong, manipulative hold one of the group exerts on the others, and the hurt and self-doubt that it causes them.

Given his lifetime assignment at the Ceremony of Twelve, Jonas becomes the receiver of memories shared by only one other in his community and discovers the terrible truth about the society in which he lives.

After spending years fleeing from the Nazis in war-torn Europe, twelve-year-old Karin Levi and her older brother Marc find a new home in a refugee camp in Oswego, New York.

Scary stories with mild gore.

Originally abandoned by her actor parents who later attempt to gain custody, Cat wages a spirited campaign to decide her own fate and remain with her grandmother.

An eleven-year-old foster child tries to cope with her longings and fears as she schemes against everyone who tries to be friendly.

Thirteen-year-old March, an epileptic, comes to live with her dog breeder father and through her growing attachment to her father's prize dog, Pride, learns a great deal about love, truth, courage and how to cope with adverse fate.

Eleven-year-old Harriet, who wants to be a writer, writes down everything she sees, but alienates her friends in the process.

Not your average school,the Hogswart School for Witchcraft and Wizardry, is where Harry Potter finds himself in and out of trouble with his friends as well as in and out of danger from a darker powers.

Life is never quite the same again for eleven-year-old David after the arrival of his new stepsister, a student of witchcraft and the occult.

After she and her parents move to an ethnically mixed inner city neighborhood, ten-year-old Joy and her new friend Neesha decide to do something to keep drug dealers off their block.

Expelled from boarding school, Charles' presence at home proves disruptive, especially for sister Rachel, a gifted seventh-grader trying to balance friendships and school activities.

As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

Kali worries for her future when she discovers that the husband her parents have arranged for her to marry is sickly.

(A Series of Unfortunate Events, #8) On the run after being falsely accused of murder, the three Baudelaire orphans find themselves in the Heimlich Hospital, with the evil Count Olaf in close pursuit.

Two boys set out to prove that worms can make a delicious meal.

Two unpopular girls try to break into the seventh grade clique system, even though they're not really sure they want to be popular at all.

In a starred review, PW said, "this intelligent, amiable and carefully researched book... frankly explains the physical, psychological, emotional and social changes that occur during puberty." Emberley's watercolor and pencil art "reinforces [the] message that bodies come in all sizes, shapes and colors-and that each variation is 'perfectly normal.' " Ages 10-14.

The exuberance of a man and his mule newly arrived in heaven causes so much furor that God gives them one last chance before He throws them out.

A contemporary fairy tale starring the heroic little James, a group of overgrown garden insects who become his friends, and a peach the size of a house.

Joey, who is still taking medication to keep him from getting too wired, goes to spend the summer with the hard-drinking father he has never known and tries to help the baseball team he coaches win the championship.

A seventeen-year-old soldier from central Virginia records his experiences in a journal as his regiment takes part in the D-Day invasion of Normandy and subsequent battles to liberate France.

After the Pearl Harbor attack, an eleven-year-old Japanese-American girl and her family are forced to go to an aliens camp in Utah.

In 1787, a fourteen-year-old slave, anxious to buy freedom for himself and his mother, escapes from his dishonest master and tries to find help in cashing the soldier's notes received by his father for fighting in the Revolution.

An inquisitive young boy who lives with his mother and younger sister in a rough housing project in New Haven, Connecticut, approaches his tenth birthday with a mixture of anticipation and worry.

Convinced that Mr. Trancas, the new teacher, is a psychopath, Lenny Cochran, a sixteen-year-old science fiction and horror fanatic, tries in vain to convince others of this fact--until Lenny disappears.

Traces the progression of Sham, a Moroccan horse, from its days as a carter's horse in France, to thoroughbred champion as the Godolphin Arabian at Newmarket, England, and the mute boy who cared for it all its life.

(Chronicles of Narnia, #7) When evil comes to Narnia, Jill and Eustace help fight the great last battle, and Aslan leads his people to a glorious new paradise.

Jack is a freshman in high school when he decides that he wants to be a hero. One small lie gets him a job as a gunner in a B-17 flying combat mission across Europe in 1944. But he wasn't prepared for the terror of night missions or getting shot down.

A collection of humorous poems and drawings.

During a summer spent at Rockaway Beach in 1944, Lily's friendship with a young Hungarian refugee causes her to see the war and her own world differently.

(Chronicles of Narnia, #2) Four English school children find their way through the back of a wardrobe into the magic land of Narnia and assist Aslan, the golden lion, to triumph over the White Witch, who has cursed the land with eternal winter.

A family travels from the big woods of Wisconsin to a new home on the prairie, where they build a house, meet neighboring Indians, build a well, and fight a prairie fire.

Chronicles the joys and sorrows of the four March sisters as they grow into young women in nineteenth-century New England.

Even though his classmates from first grade on have considered him strange and a loser, Daniel Zinkoff's optimism and exuberance and the support of his loving family do not allow him to feel that way about himself.

After their mother's death, Olivia and Nellie go to live with their great aunt, where they slowly bring her overgrown and weedy old garden back to life, enabling them to adjust to a new life as well.

Impoverished Vermont farm girl Lyddie Worthen is determined to gain her independence by becoming a factory worker in Lowell, Massachusetts, in the 1840s.

(Chronicles of Narnia, #1) When Digory and Polly try to return the wicked witch Jadis to her own world, the magic gets mixed up and they all land in Narnia where they witness Aslan blessing the animals with human speech.

After his parents die, Jeffrey Lionel Magee's life becomes legendary, as he accomplishes athletic and other feats which awe his contemporaries.

In 1851 in South Carolina, Miles, a twelve-year-old slave, is sent to a "breaking ground" to have his spirit broken but endures the experience by secretly taking reading lessons from another slave.

(A Series of Unfortunate Events, #4) Accidents, evil plots, and general misfortune abound when, in their continuing search for a home, the Baudelaire orphans are sent to live and work in a sinister lumber mill.

Portrays the adventure-studded existence of the poor, but resourceful, Moffat family, whose members lie in a yellow house on New Dollar Street.

At the beginning of the Revolutionary War, hoping to keep bloodshed away from their valley, a twelve-year-old Delaware Indian boy and his white friend search sacred land for the bones of a legendary beast.

More traditional and modern-day stories of ghosts, witches, vampires, "jump" stories, and scary songs.

Determined to prove that the cow he meets is really a moose, Morris the moose enlists the help of a rather confused deer and horse.

Mr. Popper is delighted when he is given an Antarctic penquin as a pet, but the situation gets out of hand after Captain Cook gets a mate and ten baby penguins.

When Guy's mother announces that she is going to marry the father of his despised enemy Lana, Guy realizes that he must join forces with Lana to stop the event.

Growing up, trying to be accepted, and having a sister with Down Syndrome make life a challenge for Charlie.

Twelve poems featuring vampires, werewolves, ghouls, and other monsters.

When her father is transferred to an army camp in Massachusetts during the Second World War, 11-year-old Darcy feels isolated in her French-Canadian neighborhood until she meets the vivacious Kathleen Mary O'Hara and learns about Catholicism.

Smuggled out of Nigeria after their mother's murder, Sade and her younger brother are abandoned in London when their uncle fails to meet them at the airport and they are fearful of their new surroundings and of what may have happened to their journalist father back in Nigeria.

(A Series of Unfortunate Events, #2) After narrowly escaping the menacing clutches of the dastardly Count Olaf, the three Baudelaire orphans are taken in by a kindly herpetologist with whom they live happily for an all-too-brief time.

Not long after learning that he was adopted, eleven-year-old Peter is hit by a car and then given several chances to alter events that could lead to his death.

A Black family living in the South during the 1930s is faced with prejudice and discrimination which their children don't understand.

Struggling with school and her feelings since her father left, Sahara gets a fresh start with a new and unique teacher who supports her writing talents and the individuality of each of her classmates.

Seventh grader Sammy's penchant for speaking her mind gets her in trouble when she involves herself in the investigation of a robbery at the "seedy" hotel across the street from the seniors' building where she is living with her grandmother.

Yarns about ghosts and witches, "jump" stories, scary songs, and modern-day scary tales. Many include song lyrics and music.

Against all odds, Benno and his friends in the barrio turn an abandoned house into a shelter for homeless people.

Carly Chambers spends her summer days delivering mysterious packages for her harsh father but when she sneaks out at night to find some freedom, she faces danger from all sides.

The title says it all -- photos of nudes and frank discussion of the sexual behaviors of children, teens, and adults.

After a horrible hag saves King Arthur's life by answering a riddle, Sir Gawain agrees to marry her and thus releases her from an evil enchantment.

After her parents disappear and she is turned over to the care of a strange "great-uncle," Molly must rely on her dreams about an old Mohawk story for her safety and maybe even for her life.

A thirteen-year-old boy wanders down to the New Orleans wharf to watch the slave traders unload their cargo. He is shanghaied aboard a ship bound for Africa to play for the slaves while they exercise. He befriends a black boy his age and they witness the horrors of slavery together.

A fictionalized autobiography in which eight-year-old Yoko escapes from Korea to Japan with her mother and sister at the end of World War II.

Twelve-year-old Gillian is sent away from her mother who is dying of AIDS to live with her relatives in Tennessee.

A slave and her family find refuge on Roanoke Island, North Carolina, during the Civil War.

Seventh-grader Jason narrates the events of his year, from school, hair, and pimples, to mothers, little brothers, and a girl.

Getting to know the kids at her new school in Miami, making up stories about starring in movies, and finding the evidence needed to convince the chief of police that Hitler is alive keep ten-year-old Sally busy during the winter of 1948.

After the death of his grandmother, ten-year-old Spoon observes the changes in his grandfather and tries to find the perfect artifact to preserve his memories of her.

Jake, a budding juvenile delinquent, is sent for home schooling to the arty and eccentric Applewhite family's Creative Academy, where he discovers talents and interests he never knew he had.

Taking her overprotected young charge to the public park to broaden his horizons, fourteen-year-old baby sitter Enid enjoys unexpected friendships with a black saxophonist and a bag lady until she is charged with kidnapping.

A fourth grade boy tries to deal with his very active brother.

Tallahassee Higgins enjoys the vagabond lifestyle she lives with her free-spirited mother, but when Mother goes to Los Angeles to try her luck in TV and movies, Tallahassee is placed with her uncle whose conventional suburban lifestyle makes her question her mother's values--and her own.

Jamie's sudden and terrible death leaves his best friend to face tragedy alone.

Joe's decision to leave home is prompted by despair over his Mother's blindness to his younger brother's talents and his older brother's drug addiction.

Unable to accept or explain his family's new wealth, his growing interest in sex, and a friend's shoplifting, a 13-year-old finds his stomach pains getting worse and worse.

Etta, a twelve-year-old orphan in nineteenth-century Connecticut, meets a boy living in an abandoned cabin on the New Haven and Northampton Canal and has adventures with him while trying to be reunited with her siblings.

Thirteen-year-old Miranda moves with her family to a small Massachusetts town and a new home in which a mysterious dollhouse allows her to see into the past, where she discovers her new home exerts an evil influence on the women of each generation of inhabitants--including Miranda's mother.

Having survived being blinded and shipwrecked on a tiny Caribbean island with the old Afro-West Indian Timothy, twelve-year-old white Phillip is rescued and hopes to regain his sight with an operation. Alternate chapters follow the life of Timothy from his days as a young cabin boy during the late eighteen-hundreds.

When he builds his raft, a twelve-year-old boy never dreams that it will serve as the sole means of escape for him and his grandmother when hostile Indians threaten their prairie cabin.

Eleven-year-old Henry escapes his family's problems by watching the woodcarving of Mr. Levine, an elderly Holocaust survivor, but when Henry is manipulated into betraying his friend, he comes to know true evil.

Jason, a nine-year-old Jewish boy, pursues his dream of becoming a great violinist, even as he deals with disappointments and the deaths of loved ones.

After her mother's death, Julie goes to live with Aunt Cordelia, a spinster schoolteacher, where she experiences many emotions and changes as she grows from seven to eighteen.

In a series of letters to his parents and friends, twelve-year-old Carl Davis, III, chronicles his initial anger, confusion, and disdain as well as his gradual change of heart about being sent to a small Southern town to live with his grandmother.

Four students, with their own individual stories, develop a special bond and attract the attention of their teacher, a paraplegic, who chooses them to represent their sixth-grade class in the Academic Bowl competition.

Rob admits having seen a murder, but no one believes him--except the murderer.

(A Series of Unfortunate Events, #7) Under a new government program based on the saying, It takes a village to raise a child, the Baudelaire orphans are adopted by an entire town, with disastrous results.

After her mother leaves home suddenly, thirteen-year-old Sal and her grandparents take a car trip retracing her mother's route. Along the way, Sal recounts the story of her friend Phoebe, whose mother also left.

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

The mysterious death of an eccentric millionaire brings together an unlikely assortment of heirs who must uncover the circumstances of his death before they can claim their inheritance.

Having fled to a family friend's hillside trailer after his mother's boyfriend tried to throw his baby sister against a wall, nine-year-old Jamie finds himself living an existence full of uncertainty and fear.

Written for parents unsure about what to cover during "the talk". These books help parents inform their pre-teens about the changes their bodies are experiencing.

During the summer of 1971 in a small Texas town, thirteen-year-old Toby and his best friend Cal meet the star of a sideshow act, 600-pound Zachary, the fattest boy in the world.

Written for children 4-8 yrs. old, this book describes the reproductive process from intercourse to birth.

A boy who turns into a TV set and a girl who eats a whale are only two of the characters in a collection of humorous poetry illustrated with the author's own drawings.

Classmates can't believe that 16-year-old Billy shot and killed his girlfriend. What they really cannot understand is how he got the gun in the first place.

A bratty prince and his "whipping boy" have many adventures when they inadvertently trade places after becoming involved with dangerous outlaws.

In 1920, eleven-year-old Lillie Mae, recently orphaned, goes to live with her loving great-aunt and great-uncle in their Kentucky farm house, where she learns the truth about several secrets.

It's 1945, and when Frankie isn't re-enacting his favorite radio dramas, he's spying on a "mad scientist" who has rented a room in his parents' house.

(A Series of Unfortunate Events, #3) Catastrophes and misfortunes continue to plague the Baudelaire orphans after they're sent to live with fearful Aunt Josephine who offers little protection against Count Olaf's treachery.

Abandoned once again by her mother and homeless in Vancouver with her younger brother Twig, Willow takes a chance and calls her grandmother for help, prompting a cross-country journey to find the home and family she's never known.

A young woman brought up in Barbados comes to live with her uncle in Connecticut, and finds their Puritan way of life difficult after her unconventional upbringing.

A young boy and his Norwegian grandmother, who is an expert on witches, together foil a witches' plot to destroy the world's children by turning them into mice.

Paulsen's autobiographical celebration of his longtime love of dogsledding and sled dogs

As Palmer comes of age he must either accept the violence of being a wringer at his Pennsylvania town's annual Pigeon day or find the courage to oppose it.

Meg and Charles Wallace set out with their friend Calvin in a search for their father. His top secret job as a physicist for the government has taken him away and the children search through time and space to find him.

A homeless boy, running from the police with a fifteen-year-old, drug-addicted prostitute, her boyfriend who just killed his own parents, and a baby, gets the chance to make a better life for himself.

When her close friend since childhood murders his adoptive parents and kills himself, 17-year-old Lynn is haunted by the tragedy.

David Garrett's already difficult family life falls apart when his mother is diagnosed with clinical depression, and he and his sister get sent to Aunt Jenn in Desolation Sound, British Columbia, but when they steal a dinghy and try to escape the situation turns dangerous.

Huckleberry Finn, an abused outcast, rafts with Jim, a runaway slave, down the Mississippi River, where they have a variety of experiences.

Events of the hijacking of a bus of children by terrorists seeking the return of their homeland are described from the perspectives of a hostage, a terrorist, an Army general involved in the rescue operation, and his son.

After discovering her grandfather is dying, fifteen-year-old Rachel gets to know him better than ever before and finds the experience bittersweet.

A senior at East Fresno High School lives on as a ghost after his brutal murder in the restroom of a club where he had gone to dance.

Eighth-grader Alice has lots of questions about sex, relationships, prejudice, and change.

Casey spends her twelfth summer visiting her grandparents in their small town while her father serves in the Korean War and her mother works two jobs.

A collection of 16 short stories about homosexuality by such authors as Bruce Coville, M.E. Kerr, William Sleator, and Jane Yolen.

In this collection, 10 African American women reflect on the sexual challenges they have faced--from sweet, weak-kneed first love to painful healing after rape and abuse.

Lyra and Will find themselves at the center of a battle between the forces of the Authority and those gathered by Lyra's father, Lord Asriel.

At the discretion of the social welfare system, a 5-year-old boy named America trustingly leaves the safe haven of his foster home for a visit with his desperate, drug-addicted mother. And because of that one lapse in adult judgment, a child is lost within the system until almost 11 years later when he tries to end his own life.

Lonely after being dumped by her two best friends, Amy hopes for a romance with Zed, whom she met in an Internet chat room, but the day they spend together in his seaside village near London is not what she expected.

When his father walks out on the family, Jason Lieberman must juggle his own plans for romance with his mother's increasing demands on him as she learns to adjust to her new single role.

Presents the humorous journal of a year in the life of a fourteen-year-old British girl who tries to reduce the size of her nose, stop her mad cat from terrorizing the neighborhood animals, and win the love of handsome hunk Robbie.

Liza puts aside her feelings for Annie after the disaster at school, but eventually she allows love to triumph over the ignorance of people.

Annie, 14, falls head over heels for handsome, wealthy 16-year-old Danny when he befriends her. But soon she is left to face her biggest challenge on her own.

Gail, a rape victim, learns she must prove her assailant's guilt in order to see him convicted.

Sixteen-year-old Billy comes to terms with his own values when he is sent to live with his gay uncle in Tucson and is introduced to the world of rodeos where he falls in love with an outspoken racehorse rider named Cara.

Fourteen-year-old Marina and sixteen-year-old Jed accompany their parents' religious cult, the Believers, to await the end of the world atop a remote mountain, where they try to decide what they themselves believe.

A collection of short stories featuring characters from earlier books by Chris Crutcher.

Dirk MacDonald, a sixteen-year-old boy living in Los Angeles, comes to terms with being gay after he receives surreal storytelling visitations from his dead father and great-grandmother.

Inner city teenagers find a suitcase full of cocaine and must decide whether to sell it and take the opportunity the money would provide or to destroy it to keep the drug from poisoning their community.

In an attempt to please her friends, sixteen-year-old Dallas goes along with their plan to rob a convience store and when her father refuses to allow to her to come home, she is sentenced to six months in the Girls' Rehabilitation Center.

Myers' autobiographical account of growing up in Harlem in the 1940s.

While traveling across the country, a group of teenagers decide to launch a kids' campaign against nuclear war unaware that they are being pursued by government agents determinied to kill each of them.

A high school junior and his cousin suffer the ramifications of joining what seems to be a "reputable" school club.

A visit to his Harlem neighborhood and the discovery that the girl he loves is using drugs give sixteen-year-old Anthony Witherspoon a new perspective both on his home and on his life at a Connecticut prep school.

Samantha Strasbourg's diary of her life as an aspiring actress working at a topless bar in New York City provides an account of one teenager's addiction to heroin and the difficulties she must face when trying to escape its grasp.

Adrien, recovering from a near-death experience after suffering a brain aneurysm two years earlier, spends the summer at her aunt's camp in Canada. While there, she unravels the secrets behind her aunt's haunted past.

Twelve-year-old Clare flees an unhappy home life and tries to survive on the streets of Atlantic City with a small gang of homeless kids, each of whom has his own secret reason for distrusting society.

Teenaged Raspberry Hill tries to sort out her confused feelings of disgust, shame, and love for her homeless, drug addicted father and worries that she may have inherited his lying and stealing ways.

While keeping a journal to record some upheavals in his life, fifteen-year-old Hal creates within its pages a science fiction story starring his alter ego, Zach.

Dark deeds continue at Trinity High School, climaxing in a public demonstration of one student's homemade guillotine.

As he relates the events leading up to the terrible accident that kills his "wild' and much-admired older brother and seven friends, Chris, as the lone survivor, tries to sort out his confused feelings of guilt, grief, and anger and to better understand the kind of person his brother really was.

When sixteen-year-old Matt is falsely accused of threatening to blow up his high school and his friends turn against him, an unlikely classmate comes to his aid.

Billy, a sixteen-year-old boy who becomes reunited with the family he was kidnapped from by his natural father six years earlier, tries to sort out his identity.

When eighteen-year-old Weldon wakes up in a hospital, he must face the tragic consequences of a drinking spree.

Jonah reveals his difficulty in separating his rich imaginary life with the real world. Between writing about his steamy, disturbing encounters with the beautiful and possibly made-up Sophie, Jonah also documents some cold, hard facts about himself: he was expelled from his Pennsylvania boarding school, his former Florida high school is forcing him to repeat 11th grade, and his mom is a scary New Age sex therapist who writes books like Hello Penis! Hello, Vagina!

Convinced her brother's death was murder rather than suicide, sixteen-year-old Frances begins her own investigation into suspicious student activities at her boarding school.

Having fallen for a human boy, a beautiful teenage werewolf must battle both her packmates and the fear of the townspeople to decide where she belongs and with whom.

Torey Adams, a high school junior with a seemingly perfect life, struggles with doubts and questions surrounding the mysterious disappearance of the class outcast.

In 1945, when the American forces take the Bikini Atoll from the occupying Japanese, Sorry Rinamu does not realize that the next year he will lead a desperate effort to save his island home from a much more deadly threat.

A story, told by two different narrators, in two different worlds 4 million years apart, of two girls who made two different important discoveries.

Janie was four years old when she nearly drowned due to her mothers neglect. Through an unhappy foster home experience, and years of feeling that she is unwanted, she keeps alive her dream of someday being a famous singer.

Fifteen-year-old Liza tries to deal with the normal everyday crises of life in an Austin, Texas, high school, a process complicated by her mother's fight with breast cancer.

When Paul falls hard for Noah, he thinks he has found his one true love, but when Noah walks out of his life, Paul has to find a way to get him back and make everything right once more.

Eighth-grader Gina Smith is targeted as easy by some boys in her new school because of her physical development and because of an incident in her past in which she was assaulted in a public swimming pool.

A collection of essays about the things that worry, excite, and interest adolescent boys.

An outcast at school, misunderstood by her parents, and mourning the disappearance of her older brother, fourteen-year-old Doreen seeks solace in her music until her sister's boyfriend forces her to confront new feelings about the world around her.

Having left the Indian reservation for the streets of New York, seventeen-year-old boxer Sonny Bear tries to harness his inner rage by training Alfred Brooks, who has left the sport to become a policeman.

While waiting for a church meeting in 1706, Susanna English, daughter of a wealthy Salem merchant, recalls the malice, fear, and accusations of witchcraft that tore her village apart in 1692.

When in the course of an unusual friendship Charlie reveals something confidential about his brother, he must decide if he can accept the risks of caring.

Fifteen-year-old Paul enters an exclusive private school and falls under the spell of a charismatic boy who may be using him.

Seventeen-year-old Casey has some of her preconceived notions challenged when she begins to tutor Baby, a member of a ganglike non-conformist society called the Clan.

Three girls spending their summer vacation at their grandparents' house on the St. Lawrence River discover hidden cocaine on an island and become suspected of drug dealing themselves.

Sent to counseling for hitting his girlfriend, Caitlin, and ordered to keep a journal, sixteen-year-old Nick recounts his relationship with Caitlin, examines his controlling behavior and anger, and describes living with his abusive father.

Over the course of a long summer in Wales, sixteen-year-old Ginny, the mixed-race, artist daughter of an English father and Haitian mother, learns that she has a half-brother from her father's earlier marriage, and that her own mother may still be alive.

While studying the Harlem Renaissance, students at a Bronx high school read aloud poems they've written, revealing their innermost thoughts and fears to their formerly clueless classmates.

Buck Dawson, the handsome, independent golden-boy whom everyone loved, respected, and admired, finds his life and relationships threatened by the revelation of a dark secret from his past.

A boy adjusts to life in a juvenile detention center.

In a trip back in time, Brann meets his father as a ten-year-old and learns for the first time to love and understand him.

Sixteen-year-old Barney has only fleeting memories about his past but, as a voluntary patient at the institute for experimental medicine, he knows he is different from the terminally ill patients surrounding him. His involvement with the bitter, slowly dying, Mazzo brings Barney hope, pain, and a moment of heroic glory.

"In this autobiographical essay, Rylant recounts the formative events of her childhood: the early loss of both her mother and father, who sent her to live with grandparents after their separation; years spent in a small Bible-belt town after her mother returned to reclaim her; her crushes on peers and on a larger-than-life hero, Bobby Kennedy; and, through it all, a determination to "be someone else," which fueled her willingness to try on the mantle of a writer."--from PW

"Sender writes a searing, memorable story of her years in the Lodz ghetto and in Auschwitz."--from PW>

Fourteen-year-old Tadashi Fukushima and his Japanese Canadian family are evacuated from their village near Prince Rupert, British Columbia, and held in an internment camp where he struggles to balance being Japanese enough and Canadian enough to get along with everyone.

Eighteen-year-old Kate, who sometimes chafes at being a preacher's daughter, finds herself losing control in her senior year as she faces difficult neighbors, the possibility that she may not be accepted by the college of her choice, and an unexpected death.

After leaving prep school Holden Caulfield spends three days on his own in New York City

The thirteen-year-old daughter of an English country knight keeps a journal in which she records the events of her life, particularly her longing for adventures beyond the usual role of women and her efforts to avoid being married off.

Each of the seven teenage friends involved in the death of a lone stranger on a deserted California road receive letters signed "Your Caretaker" demanding dangerous, impossible things and threatening violence--then fatal "accidents" begin to occur.

This novel "follows a Canadian teenager as he struggles to escape his troubled life." --from PW

When Sarah gets her hands on the answers to the eighth-grade geography midterm and decides to share them with some other students, the consequences are far-ranging.

With their parents away, four young people form a rock band that becomes wildly popular, carrying them into a "freer" life than they can cope with.

On the verge of having a shot at the heavyweight boxing championship, nineteen-year-old Sonny Bear finds himself with conflicting loyalties when trouble erupts on his reservation over the construction of a new gambling casino. Sequel to: The Brave.

Afraid that she will have no where to go when her welfare checks are stopped, nineteen-year-old high school dropout Aisha tries to figure out how she can support herself and her two young children in New York City.

Still troubled by his older brother's violent suicide, eighteen-year-old Dillon becomes deeply involved in the terrible secret of his friend Jennifer, who feels she can tell no one what her stepfather is doing to her.

A high school freshman discovers the devastating consequences of refusing to join in the school's annual fund raising drive and arousing the wrath of the school bullies.

When Tony sees the Confess-O-Rama flyer he thinks he's found the perfect "listener" to talk about all his problems and feelings. But when he finds out to whom he has been confessing, he feels betrayed.

Against great odds, a black high school drop-out trains to become a championship boxer.

Looking for excitement, Coraline ventures through a mysterious door into a world that is similar, yet disturbingly different from her own, where she must challenge a gruesome entity in order to save herself, her parents, and the souls of three others.

When sent to live on a farm in Iowa as an alternative to juvenile detention, seventeen-year-old Cosmos falls in love with a religious girl and reconsiders his values and beliefs.

A high school athlete, frustrated at being disabled after an accident, runs away from home to Oakland, California, and is helped back to mental and physical health by a Black benefactor and the people in a special school where he enrolls.

Unhappy at home, Nancy and her friend Katie adopt punk lifestyles and find relief in cutting themselves, until Nancy is forced to confront her problems.

sixteen-year-old boy living in 2407 collides with the past when he finds himself in Strasbourg in 1348 confronting the anti-Semitism that sweeps through Europe during the Black Plague.

While confined to a mental hospital, thirteen-year-old Callie slowly comes to understand some of the reasons behind her self-mutilation, and gradually starts to get better.

Two males develop their relationship during World War II when Stephan K. falls in love with an Austrian-German soldier.

Hal's summer affair with Barry Goldman ends tragically when Hal discovers he is much more committed to the relationship than his friend.

After Kia discovers that she is pregnant and that the father wants her to have an abortion, she must make some difficult decisions, aided by her youth counselor Justin and Grace, a woman she met while volunteering at a senior's home.

With the help of some unusual characters in a small California town, Danny struggles to live on his own while his father, a Vietnam veteran, is in the VA hospital.

Will Stanton discovers the role he must play in the struggle to overcome the powers of the Dark.

As survivors of an enemy invasion of their homeland, Ellie and her friends return to Australia as guides for soldiers from New Zealand who plan an attack on the Wirrawee airfield.

David Mahooley, a teenage playwright suffering from writer's block, finds himself drawn into the passionate world of a flamboyant, alcoholic young actress with a talent for lying.

The relationship between two close friends, Henry and Jonathan, changes when Jonathan's cousin David, a survivor of the Holocaust, comes to live with David's family.

Certain that his death was a mistake, wise guy David James finds himself teamed up with the "Queen of the Nerds" from his high school in preparation for a debate with God.

To a thirteen-year-old Vermont farm boy whose father slaughters pigs for a living, maturity comes early as he learns "doing what's got to be done," especially regarding his pet pig who cannot produce a litter.

Students and faculty at a high school become embroiled in a censorship case over "Huckleberry Finn."

Twelve-year-old Feni has to adjust when the pregnant young daughter of an old friend of her mother's comes to stay with them.

A thirteen-year-old girl seemingly destined for a modeling career finds she has a deformation of the spine called scoliosis.

When she agrees to meet with Jasmine as a peer counselor at their middle school, Antonia never dreams that this girl with the black lipstick and pierced eyebrow will end up helping her deal with the serious problems she faces at home and become a good friend.

Sixteen-year-old Parr Burrman and his family face some difficult times when word spreads through their rural Missouri town that his older sister is a lesbian, and she leaves the family farm to live with the daughter of the town's banker.

Emmy, whose future had once looked so bright, struggles to overcome the isolation and depression brought about by being a teen mother who gets little support from her family or the father of her child.

Sixteen-year-old John Proud is tormented by the ghost of an evil ancestor, with his own name and his own face, who was hanged in 1854 for being a demon.

Hannah resents the traditions of her Jewish heritage until time travel places her in the middle of a small Jewish village in Nazi-occupied Poland.

Born in 1929, Anne Frank received a blank diary journal on her 13th birthday, just weeks before going into hiding in Nazi occupied Holland. Her world-wide success of her journal is a fitting memorial to the gifted Jewish teenager who died at Bergen-Belsen, Germany, in 1945.

Now that the four abandoned Tillerman children are settled in with their grandmother, Dicey must decide what she wants for her siblings and herself.

Many things change in a teenage boy's life when he meets the overweight girl who answers his ad for the cat he must give away.

Resentful of her parents' divorce, a young girl tries to accommodate herself to their new lives and also find a place for herself.

Fourteen-year-old Dutch Peyton learns about growing up as her family struggles with a crippling drought and a painful past.

A fourteen-year-old Inuit 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.

Three teenage friends, Dino, Jonathon, and Ben, confront the confusions, fears, and joys of adolescent male sexuality.

Each of these ten short stories focuses on a high school student's mandatory 200 hours of community service and the youth's response to the required project.

Seventeen-year-old April finds her comfortable life changed forever when death threats to her father, a witness in a federal case, force her family to go into hiding under assumed names and flee the pursuit of a hired killer. Includes material on the Federal Witness Protection Program.

In the journal she is keeping for English class, sixteen-year-old Tish chronicles the changes in her life when her abusive father returns home after a two-year absence.

When the beautiful Wade twins move to Shadyside, they both fall for Bobby Newkirk, but one of them--either quiet, shy Bree or sexy Samantha--turns murderously jealous.

Three eighth-grade friends, preparing for the International Double Dutch Championship jump rope competition in their home town of Cincinnati, Ohio, cope with Randy's missing father, Delia's inability to read, and Yo Yo's encounter with the class bullies.

Kip has a gambling addiction, but when Kip starts dating Joey his gambling addiction is worsened by the fact that Joey's dad is a Master Illusionist and a gambler.

Fifteen-year-old Jessie and the other rebellious teenage members of a wilderness survival school team abandon their adult leader, hijack his boats, and try to run the dangerous white water at the bottom of the Grand Canyon.

A fourteen-year-old boy who lives in the subterranean world beneath New York City meets a girl from above ground. When she visits him down below, she discovers his world is not what it appears to be.

In the early twentieth century a young Chinese boy joins his father in San Francisco and helps him realize his dream of making a flying machine.

After her older sister runs away, sixteen-year-old Caitlin decides that she needs to make a major change in her own life and begins an abusive relationship with a boy who is mysterious, brilliant, and dangerous.

When she is sent to the small town in South Dakota where she had lived briefly with her great-grandmother after her father's death, fourteen-year-old Mattie must sort out her confused feelings about why she is there, her mother's possible remarriage, and the free-spirited seventeen-year-old she has just met.

Beautiful, intelligent Anna Goldsmith has just attempted suicide. As she lies in a coma, her friend Melanie and Anna's parents try to figure out why she tried to take her own life.

As her mother battles a citizens' group that wants to ban all "anti-Christian" literature from the public library, Carla faces her own battle of torn loyalties when her boyfriend starts persecuting the homosexual owners of an antiques shop.

While hoping to work as the clown in an amusement park dunk tank on the New Jersey shore the summer before his junior year in high school, Chad faces his best friend's serious illness, hassles with police, and the girl that got away.

Sixteen-year-old David, finding a strange machine that creates replicas of living organisms, duplicates himself and suffers the horrible consequences when the duplicate turns against him.

Liam's father has AIDS, and his family cannot talk about it until Liam reveals a secret that he has tried to deny ever since he saw his father embracing another man at the beach.

Jealous of her perfect mother and ignored by her artist father, Echo seeks attention and healing from a variety of people living in beautiful Los Angeles.

Annotation goes here.

Zachary, living with his divorced mother in California, finds violence gradually invading his life and making significant changes in his day-to-day existence.

"Shame hangs in the air of this house and palpably as poison gas. And yet, Zindel reminds us, strong, strange, beautiful flowers spring from such compost heaps. It is a troubling thought, one of the honest and intelligent values of this splendid and tormented play."-- from Time

The appearance of a new girl in her community changes the relationship between fourteen-year-old Molly and her best friend Vicky and complicates Molly's attempt to pinpoint her own identity.

Three survivors of an automobile crash in which the driver was killed are threatened by an executioner who believes they too should die.

The story of one overweight teen's efforts to deal with his first year in high school, his mother, his body, and the opposite sex. The sequel to Slot Machine.

After the death of his grandmother, who held the family together, teenage JP is left with a mentally challenged father and a mother who seems ineffectual and constantly sick, and he feels everything sliding out of control.

A photograph of a missing girl on a milk carton leads Janie on a search for her real identity.

Through her love of music and membership in her brother's band, fifteen-year-old Lisa learns to deal with her feelings of abandonment following her mother's death.

At the request of her social worker, thirteen-year-old Linda gradually reveals how her life with her unstable mother and her younger brother led to her rape and the murder she witnessed.

In the summer of 1938, Paul Moreaux, the thirteen-year-old son of French-Canadian immigrants, inherits the ability to become invisible, but this power soon leads to death and destruction.

Seventeen-year-old Richie Perry, just out of his Harlem high school, enlists in the Army in the summer of 1967 and spends a devastating year on active duty in Vietnam.

Through letters and essays, emotionally disturbed sixteen-year-old Abby chronicles her growing desperation in a family consisting of parents who seem devoid of love, one older sister bent of self-destruction, and another older sister who has always seemed perfect.

Follows the lives of a Newfoundland family for several months as they deal with the father's drinking and unemployment, the son's poor choice of friends and subsequent problems, and general familial deterioration.

Jeanne Wakatsuki was seven years old in 1942 when her family was uprooted from their home and sent to live at Manzanar internment camp--with 10,000 other Japanese Americans.

In a series of diary entries, thirteen-year-old Judi recounts her struggles to lose weight, hide her bulimia from her mother, find a boy friend, and decide on a profession.

Seventeen-year-old Troy, depressed, suicidal, and weighing nearly 300 pounds, gets a new perspective on life when a homeless teenager who is a genius on guitar wants Troy to be the drummer in his rock band.

Jim, 17, has always fathered his younger brother until, on the death of their mother, their father returns. Then Jim must compete not just for the father role but also for the woman he and his father both love.

In a future where most people have computer implants in their heads to control their environment, a boy meets an unusual girl who is in serious trouble.

A strange incident on the night of the senior prom changes John Fell's entire life, leading him to enroll in an exclusive private school under an assumed name.

As she tries to enjoy her senior year and choose which college she will attend, Korean American Ellen Sung must deal with the prejudice of some of her classmates and pressure from her parents to get good grades.

Rescued from a murderous life with her mother, Chloe Wilder lives with her grandparents in the cocoon of a quiet, middle-class neighborhood. For the first time in her life, things are steady, safe ... and stifling. Chloe, along with her grandparents Hispanic maid, set off on an adventure, very similar to that of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn. She encounters prejudice and social injustice as well as human kindness.

The author recounts humorous, sad, traumatic, romantic, and confusing episodes from his childhood.

When three high-school friends are invited to live briefly with a wealthy neighbor, their lives are changed by their relationships with a mysterious "gardener."

After surviving a fire, Gerald experiences separation from his mother, the loss of his great aunt, and life with his stepsister's abusive father.

At the beginning of eighth grade, learning disabled Max and his new friend Freak, whose birth defect has affected his body but not his brilliant mind, find that when they combine forces they make a powerful team.

A teenager trying to recover from the tragic death of his father and stepmother believes himself to be responsible for the rash of teen suicides occurring in his town.

A series of vignettes in free verse in which the writer reminisces about his life as a twelve-year-old boy living in a small town during the hot summer of 1938.

Thirteen-year-old Melanin Sun's comfortable, quiet life is shattered when his mother reveals she has fallen in love with a woman.

When fifteen-year-old Nathanial moves to a sinister town that has been bruised by an ancient evil, he finds himself one of those chosen to fight the cycle of darkness.

A group of gay and lesbian teenagers finds mutual support when they form the "Geography Club" at their high school.

An albino teenage boy strives to find acceptance in a circus.

After being expelled from a fancy boarding school, Cyd Charisse's problems with her mother escalate after Cyd falls in love with a sensitive surfer and is subsequently sent from San Francisco to New York City to spend time with her biological father.

When Brad asks someone else to the senior prom, Nicole resorts to a desperate measure -- she decides to make her next-door neighbor over into a dream date.

Stories about nine remarkable young women include the tales of a girl with two mothers, a girl who keeps a strange blue-skinned creature in her closet, a rock star groupie, and a dancer who loves poetry and moonlight picnics

While journeying to Zimbabwe from Mozambique, eleven-year-old Nhamo struggles to escape drowning and starvation and in so doing comes close to the luminous world of the African spirits.

Events leading up to a night of terror at a high school dance are told from the point of view of various people involved.

A growing attachment between fifteen-year-old Mary McNeal and her homeroom teacher tests her character and proves her maturity.

Follows a family's two hundred forty-one year history, from the capture of an African boy in the 1750s through the lives of his descendants, as their dreams and circumstances lead them away from and back to the small plot of land in South Carolina that they call the Glory Field.

A novel in diary form of a fifteen-year-old girl's journey from a secure middle class family to the nightmare world of drug addiction, hustlers, and dealers.

The boy and girl are stripped and marooned on a small island for the night. They are the 'goats.' The kids at camp think it is a great joke. No harm is intended, but the goats don't see it that way.

Left penniless by their latest stepmother while their father is looking for work in Alaska, three youngsters start out on what becomes a dangerous trek over the mountains to a small town where they once lived and where they plan to wait for their father.

Accompanied by her shape-shifting demon, Lyra Belacqua sets out to prevent her best friend and other kidnapped children from becoming the subject of gruesome experiments in the Far North.

Two girls working together on a school play fall in love.

A battered, nine-year-old boy learns to embrace life when he is adopted by an old man in the English countryside during the Second World War.

Edda's mother is courted by the man responsible for her young father's death in a mine accident in a small Kentucky town.

A high school junior who has received two blood transfusions finds out he has the AIDS virus, though not the disease, and finds all his relationships changing--with his friends, his girlfriend, and even his family.

After his father disappears, twelve-year-old Felipe, his mother, and his younger sisters set out on a difficult and dangerous journey, trying to make their way from their home in El Salvador to Canada.

A biography of Ali coveringhis life from childhood to the present day. Includes highlights of his career and the controversies surrounding him.

Teenage backpackers from an exclusive boarding school find themselves the target of contract killers.

Learning from her grandmother that her family was active in the Quit India movement of 1942, a rebellion against nearly two centuries of British occupation, gives fifteen-year-old Tara new pride in her heritage, but she still objects when her teacher implies she is not a regular Canadian.

High school junior Eddie thinks he may have found the solution to his anger and unfocused identity in the beautiful, disturbing Angela Favor, until she draws him into the investigation of the murder of her director at the New Energy Theater Troupe.

Sixteen-year-old Jimmy, on probation for assault, talks about life with three old men in a Harlem barbershop and hears about the tools he can use to get what he wants.

When his girlfriend decides to give their baby away, seventeen-year-old Sam is determined to keep him and raise him alone.

A high school girl faces pressure from her older brother, who is also her guardian, when she and her peers peacefully protest a teacher who they believe has stopped doing her job.

Small town prejudices emerge when a love affair between two teenage girls is revealed.

After starting to publish a zine in which he writes his secret feelings about his lonely life and his parents' divorce, sixteen-year-old John meets an unusual girl and begins to develop a healthier personality.

Fifteen-year-old Gabriel is continually embarrassed by his teacher/writer father, but when he goes to live with him in Los Angeles in an apartment complex full of unusual characters, Gabriel gains new insights into himself and his father.

Sent to live with relatives on their farm because of his unhappy home life, an eleven-year-old city boy meets his distant cousin Harris and is given an introduction to a whole new world.

Unable to understand why his district attorney father is so upset about the defacing of a local temple, Zack learns that one of his own classmates is behind the crime and begins to understand why such acts are so threatening.

In a land that has been at war so long that no one remembers the reason for fighting, the shapeshifters who rule the two factions agree to marry in the hope of bringing peace, despite deep-seated fear and distrust of each other.

Although grudgingly aware that ten-year-old Pinki has extraordinary powers to heal, sixteen-year-old Barry becomes increasingly convinced that she is an unwilling participant at the healing sessions run by her enterprising stepfather.

A dozen real-life stories explore teenage relationships, focusing on such topics as interracial dating, codependence, coping with a disability and breaking up.

Fourteen-year-old Marley's seemingly perfect life in the small town of Heaven is disrupted when she discovers that her father and mother are not her real parents.

Summering in the Hamptons on a famous rock star's estate, 17-year-old Lang tries to decide how to tell his longtime friends that he's gay--while struggling with an unexpected infatuation with a young woman from France.

After years of abuse from his mother and neglect from his father, ninth-grader Sean Parker is headed for trouble when he is sent to do community service for violating curfew at a farm owned by an old man who teaches Sean that he can take control of his own fate.

The life of a thirteen-year-old Harlem youth on his way to becoming a confirmed heroin addict is seen from his viewpoint and from that of several people around him.

After joining the army at fifteen and having his face blown away by a grenade in a battle in France, Francis returns home to Frenchtown hoping to find--and kill--the former childhood hero he feels betrayed him.

Jeff dreams of being a movie director, and when he falls in love with a once-aspiring actress and her baby daughter, he imagines that together they can make their dreams come true.

Fourteen-year-old Hope visits her new foster mother's Nebraska farm and, through old letters, a diary, and stories, gets a vivid picture of the past in the voices of four girls her age who lived there in 1869, 1900, 1936, and 1960.

When fourteen-year-old Holly Starcross meets her father for the first time in eight years, the experience changes the way she thinks about him, her mother, and even herself.

Returning with her migrant family to her father's childhood home, a 14-year-old struggles with her new stationary life.

A teenage basketball player from Harlem is befriended by a former professional player who, after being forced to quit because of a point shaving scandal, hopes to prevent other young athletes from repeating his mistake.

Roy, who is new to his small Florida community, becomes involved in another boy's attempt to save a colony of burrowing owls from a proposed construction site.

Five fifteen-year-old orphans of widely varying personality characteristics are involuntarily placed in a house of endless stairs as subjects for a psychological experiment on conditioned human response.

In a future where humans despise clones, Matt enjoys special status as the young clone of El Patron, the 142-year-old leader of a corrupt drug empire nestled between Mexico and the United States.

Overweight high school senior Bo decides to change her image while working on the school play with a former star football player who is also struggling to find a new identity for himself.

Twelve-year-old Toswiah finds her life changed when her family enters the witness protection program.

A young boy desperately tries to unlock his past yet knows he must hide those memories if he is to remain alive.

Marie, the only Black girl in the eighth grade willing to befriend her White classmate Lena, discovers that Lena's father is doing horrible things to her in private.

A feisty, sexy fairy helps a girl deal with her annoying mother, absent father, and a past incident of sexual abuse.

Written in 1969, it was the first young-adult novel to deal with the issue of homosexuality.

High school freshman Ben should be enjoying playing football, meeting girls, and going to parties, but he's too busy trying to cope with his father's moving out to live with another man.

A high school football player has to face his collapsing world brought on by his drinking problem.

Risika, a teenage vampire, wanders back in time to the year 1684 when, as a human, she died and was transformed against her will.

Barney's boring seaside vacation suddenly becomes more interesting when the cottage next door is occupied by three exotic neighbors who are addicted to a game they call "Interstellar Pig."

Unemployed after high school in the highly robotic society of 2154, Lisse and seven friends resign themselves to a boring existence in their "Designated Area" until the government invites them to play The Game.

While training for a triathlon, seventeen-year-old Bo attends an anger management group at school which leads him to examine his relationship with his father.

The editor of the classic GO ASK ALICE has compiled the poignant journals of a 14-year-old date-rape victim who contracted AIDS and died.

A 17-year-old girl in New York City with strong ideas about liberated sexual behavior becomes involved with a more traditional boy from Ohio.

A car accident causes fifteen-year-old Izzy to lose one leg and face the need to start building a new life as an amputee.

Feeling deprived all her life of schooling, friends, mother, and even her name by her twin sister, Louise finally begins to find her identity.

The friendship between a troubled boy, recently released from a reform school, and the farm girl who lives next door angers the faculty at their school and leads to a dangerous confrontation.

Jazmin, a fourteen-year-old African-American girl who lives with her sister in a Harlem apartment, finds strength in writing poetry and keeping a diary.

Jock Ryder, aspiring baseball star, meets Jillian, a girl who makes him reevaluate all his priorities.

Emily Rose has always been comfortable with her biracial family background, until she visits her great-grandmother in Texas.

While running away from home and an unwanted marriage, a thirteen-year-old Eskimo girl becomes lost on the North Slope of Alaska and is befriended by a wolf pack.

Rey, a Mexican American living with his close-knit family in a Texas town near the Mexican border, describes his transition from boy to young man.

Katherine Tarbox's true story of how a man in his forties with a history of pedophilia used the Internet to manipulate and molest her. She discusses how she fought back by prosecuting him under the Communications Decency Act of 1996 and by sharing her experiences so that other teens might avoid a similar situation.

Isabel, a thirteen-year-old girl living on the island of Guam, and her family try to cope with the death of Isabel's mother who committed suicide.

Junior high school student Nick must face the fact that his father is plunging fast into serious mental illness.

When she befriends Christina, the new girl in school, Annie does not suspect that there is more to her than meets the eye and that Christina will have a huge impact on Annie's family and her oldest friends.

As she begins a very tough last semester of high school, Holland finds herself puzzled about her future and intrigued by a transfer student who wants to start a Lesbigay club at school.

Panicked robbers of a supermarket in Northern Ireland seize Susie Quinn in their rush to flee. She must use all her cunning and courage to escape.

After being acquitted of murder, seventeen-year-old David goes to stay with relatives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he finds himself forced to face his past as he learns more about his strange young cousin Lily.

A teenager casually suggests playing a cruel trick on the English teacher, but did he intend it to end with murder?

Sixteen-year-old Lissa's relationship with her best friend changes after they kiss at a party and Lissa does not know what to do, until she gets help from an unexpected new friend.

In Manchester, England, when a seventeen-year-old girl who hasn't been acting like herself lately is turned into the very creature she has personified, she isn't sure that the change is all bad.

After the Civil War, Paul, the son of a white father and a black mother, finds himself caught between the two worlds of colored folks and white folks as he pursues his dream of owning land of his own.

Gillian's family arrives at their summer home to find it has been burglarized, and Gillian is horrified to discover that her diary is one of the stolen items.

When April Hunt moves to St. Simon Island, Georgia, to live with her father, a recovering alcoholic, she becomes involved with an illegal alien from El Salvador and learns about his life and country.

Fifteen-year-old Todd sees his perfect suburban world start to unravel when his little sister has her mi