Ramona at 7 1/2 sometimes feels discriminated against by being the youngest in the family.

Sixth-grader Sugar and her mother lose their beloved house and experience the harsh world of homelessness.

Growing up in a small town in upstate New York during the 1960s, a young girl, unwanted by her mother, searches for love and acceptance.

The making of "Show ways," or quilts which once served as secret maps for freedom-seeking slaves, is a tradition passed from mother to daughter.

Eleven-year-old tomboy Livie is sure that she is responsible for the accident that has put her mother into a coma, so, trying to make amends, she travels through the Louisiana swamps to get a spell that will make her mother well again.

When best friends Natalie, age ten, and Annie, nine, form a detective agency to solve neighborhood mysteries, Natalie hopes it will help her win a school election, while Annie seeks the mother who abandoned her.

At age thirteen Dusie makes the horrifying discovery that she, like her New York artist mother, is a Gorgon--a Greek mythological monster sprouting snakes from her head and capable of turning humans into stone with one angry look.

Ashley's summer is filled with babysitting, letters to her best friend at camp, and a wish jar filled with secret revelations that help her understand her mother in a whole new way.

When the family's drugstore is failing, seventh-grader Lucy uses her problem solving talents to come up with solution that might resuscitate the business, along with helping the environment.

In Oregon, eleven-year-old Hope begins coping with her mother's verbal abuse by devising survival strategies for herself based on a history unit about the Holocaust, and meanwhile she works toward buying a pair of purple hiking boots by helping at a second-hand shop. Includes "Hope notes" and readers' guide.