After spending her life with her mentally retarded mother and agoraphobic neighbor, twelve-year-old Heidi sets out from Reno, Nevada, to New York to find out who she is.

A thirteen-year-old girl gains a much more sympathetic understanding of her relationship with her mother when she has to spend a day in her mother's body.

Marigold hopes her family's move gives her a fresh start to make friends at her new school, but her hopes are dashed when her performance-artist mother gets a job as the new drama teacher.

After an eight-year absence, Dizzy's "New Age traveler" mother suddenly shows up on her twelfth birthday and whisks her away to a series of festivals throughout Scotland in her rattletrap van.

A year after her mother has deserted the family, eleven-year-old Shelby goes to stay with her, deep in the Louisiana bayou, where they both confront old hurts and regrets.

Things are difficult for twelve-year-old Jan and her mother after her father's death, and when it turns out that her beloved horse needs an operation, Jan reluctantly gets money from an elderly woman whom she has befriended.

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.

Trying to fit in despite having a loud, embarrassing best friend, eleven-year-old Talia becomes a commentator on her middle school's closed-circuit television program and turns the tables on her mother, a talk show host who has been revealing Talia's

Ten-year-old Tracy, who lives in a children's home because her mother was forced to give her up, dreams of getting a good foster family where she can be happy until her mother comes back for her.