Cooperative Collection Development

Summer knows that kouun means "good luck" in Japanese, and this year her family has none of it. Just when she thinks nothing else can possibly go wrong, an emergency whisks her parents away to Japan--right before harvest season. Summer and her little brother are left in the care of their grandparents -- Obaachan and Jiichan -- who come out of retirement in order to harvest wheat and help pay the bills.

Everyone thinks that Sophie is an orphan. True, there were no other recorded female survivors from the shipwreck that left baby Sophie floating in the English Channel in a cello case, but Sophie remembers seeing her mother wave for help. Her guardian tells her it is almost impossible that her mother is still alive—but “almost impossible” means “still possible.” And you should never ignore a possible.

By the time Binny is eleven years old she has lived in two worlds. A child's world, and a time-to-start-growing-up-now world. An easy world, and a hard world. The first world held Binny; her mother and father; her big sister, Clem; and her little brother, James. And Max, the best dog in the whole world. But after her father's death, money was tight, and Binny's world became cramped apartments with no room for Max. So horrible Aunty Violet stepped in and gave Max away.

Seventh grader Sierra Shepard has always been the perfect student, so when she sees that she accidentally brought her mother's lunch bag to school, including a paring knife, she immediately turns in the knife at the office. Much to her surprise, her beloved principal places her in in-school suspension and sets a hearing for her expulsion, citing the school's ironclad zero tolerance policy: no drugs, no weapons, no exceptions.