Friendship

Nora and her family have just arrived from Russia and are making a new home on the American frontier. The prairie is very different from the forested hills Nora is used to. Most of all, it’s lonely. Papa has the cows he sings to as he milks them. Baby brother Milo has a dog to follow him wherever he goes. But Nora has no one and nothing to call her own until Papa brings home a dozen chicks and two geese. Nora names each one, and they follow her everywhere — even to church! But what will happen when one of her beloved chicks goes missing?

Brrrr! The leaves are off the trees, and frost is on the ground. It's time for bugs to hunker down and hide out for the winter.

But Ant isn't ready to hunker down. Ant isn't ready to be all by herself for months on end. The thought of a long chilly season without her best friend, Honey Bee, is enough to make Ant shiver with dread. Can Ant brave the cold for one last surprise visit before the snow flies?

Whatever the outside weather might be, a friendship is going to have hot days and cold ones. Just as Ant and Honey Bee!

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.

"This is the 100 percent true story of the summer I - Wyatt Jones - was eleven and built a fort in the woods with my friend Augie Valerio. It isn't the story I handed in to my teacher about how I spent my summer vacation. See, there's stuff that happened that you can't really talk about in school. Not unless you want to get into trouble. Plus, there are things in here like dead squirrels. and squirrel guts. There are weapons, too: a slingshot, a pellet gun, and a pocketknife. I'm just warning you, in case that kind of stuff bothers you.