Armando and his father are trash-pickers in Tijuana, Mexico, but when Senor David brings his "school"--a blue tarp set down near the garbage dump--to their neighborhood, Armando's father decides that he must attend classes and learn. Based on a true

Jeremy, who longs to have the black high tops that everyone at school seems to have but his grandmother cannot afford, is excited when he sees them for sale in a thrift shop and decides to buy them even though they are the wrong size.

"I've been waiting for this book for a long time. Well, not this book, because I never imagined that the book I was waiting for would be so devastatingly smart and funny, so consistently entertaining and unflinchingly on target. In fact, I would like to have written it myself - if, that is, I had lived Linda Tirado's life and extracted all the hard lessons she has learned. I am the author of Nickel and Dimed, which tells the story of my own brief...

Ten-year-old Cincinnatian Grace Morgan is fed up with the unkempt boy who harrasses her quiet cousin, but she sees things differently when their town is hit by a serious drought and she and her family get a taste of poverty.

When Thomas Peaceful's older brother is forced to join the British Army, Thomas decides to sign up as well, although he is only fourteen years old, to prove himself to his country, his family, his childhood love, Molly, and himself.

Tree-ear, a thirteen-year-old orphan in medieval Korea, lives under a bridge near a potters' village, and longs to learn how to throw the delicate celadon ceramics himself.

Leaving Breezy Street is the account of a woman who had to make the best out of tough situations and limited options. A testimony on how the cycle of abuse can be perpetuated-but also broken. Proof of the transformation power of love between biological and chosen family. This is the raw truth of what American life can be like for so many people--