Unlike the other Birthmothers in her utopian community, teenaged Claire forms an attachment to her baby, feeling a great loss when he is taken to the Nurturing Center to be adopted by a family unit.

Little Sal and Little Bear both lose their mothers while eating blueberries and almost end up with the other's mother.

Llama Llama's mother takes good care of him when he has to stay home from school because he is sick, but when Mama Llama begins to feel sick, too, Llama Llama knows how to take care of her.

When their father passes away, four grown siblings, bruised and banged up by their respective adult lives, are forced to return to their childhood home and live under the same roof together for a week. Confronting their history and the frayed states of their relationships among the people who know and love them best, they ultimately reconnect in hysterical and emotionally affecting ways amid the chaos, humor, heartache and redemption that only families...

Narrator Jack and his mother, who was kidnapped seven years earlier when she was a 19-year-old college student, celebrate his fifth birthday. They live in a tiny, 11-foot-square soundproofed cell in a converted shed in the kidnapper's yard. The sociopath, whom Jack has dubbed Old Nick, visits at night, grudgingly doling out food and supplies. But Ma, as Jack calls her, proves to be resilient and resourceful--and attempts a nail-biting escape.

When mother Marlo gives birth to her third baby, she wasn't expecting to hire a nanny to help with the newborn. Her brother contracts the services of young Tully as a nanny on Marlo's behalf, however. At first Marlo thinks of having a nanny as an unnecessary indulgence, but as the two women get to know each other better, they begin to form an unexpected bond, although their relationship is not always such smooth sailing.

A nurturing voice reassures the lonely and afraid in difficult times--

After Mama takes a job in Chicago during World War II, Ada Ruth stays with Grandma but misses her mother who loves her more than rain and snow.

Magnolia the goose longs to be a mother and finally gets her wish in a most unusual way after a circus leaves town.

Webster J. Duck turns to several animals when he tries to find his mother.