Sharon Creech

After her mother leaves home suddenly, thirteen-year-old Sal and her grandparents take a car trip retracing her mother's route. Along the way, Sal recounts the story of her friend Phoebe, whose mother also left.

Thirteen-year-old fraternal twins Dallas and Florida have grown up in a terrible orphanage but their lives change forever when an eccentric but sweet older couple invites them each on an adventure, beginning in an almost magical place called Ruby Holler.

When a principal loves his school so much that he wants the children to attend classes every day of the year, it's up to his students to show him free time is a good thing, too.

Thirteen-year-old Sophie and her cousin Cody record their transatlantic crossing aboard the Wanderer, a forty-five foot sailboat, which, along with uncles and another cousin, is en route to visit their grandfather in England.

Jack is studying poetry again in school, and he continues to write poems reflecting his understanding of famous poems and how they relate to his life.

"In the little town of Blackbird Tree live two orphan girls: one Naomi Deane, brimming with curiosity, and her best friend, Lizzie Scatterding, who could talk the ears off a cornfield. Naomi has a knack for being around when trouble happens. For she knows all the peculiar people in town--like Crazy Cora and Witch Wiggins and Mr. Farley. But then, one day, a boy drops out of a tree. The strangely charming Finn boy. Then the Dingle Dangle man appears,...

When his father brings home an ailing, newborn donkey, Louie names the animal Winslow and takes care of him, but everyone, including Louie's quirky friend Nora, thinks Winslow is not going to survive.

In a tiny village in the Swiss Alps, an angel meets an American girl named Zola who has come with her father to open a school, and together Zola and the angel rescue a group of homeless orphans, who gradually change everything.

"Mr. Keene runs a fine, fine school. He encourages his students to express themselves through the creative arts...Then Mr. Keene's appendix bursts, and he's rushed to the hospital. A new principal named Mr. Tatters arrives to take his place...He does not smile, he does not laugh, disapproves of their creative methods of learning, and immediately implements a policy of daily tests...Soon the students tire of constant test taking, and the teachers grow...