family

Fifth-grader Abbie, descended from a long line of witches, tries to keep her family's magic powers secret from everyone she knows until her father brings home a kitten with some very unusual characteristics.

Chirchir, a young girl in Kenya, wants to be useful, but her botched attempts at helping send her looking for the one thing she does best.

After second-grader Stink gets an unsatisfactory grade in physical education, his parents tell him he must play a sport and so he masters thumb wrestling, as seen on a sports channel.

Fourth-grader Cal learns a lot about teasing and standing up for others when a weird new student joins his class, while Stella, the tenth-grader who lives with Cal's family to help his mother, practices for her driving test.

Jake, a budding juvenile delinquent, is sent for home schooling to the arty and eccentric Applewhite family's Creative Academy, where he discovers talents and interests he never knew he had.

Brendan Buckley, a biracial ten-year-old, applies his scientific problem-solving ability and newfound interest in rocks and minerals to connect with his white grandfather, the president of Puyallup Rock Club, and to learn why he and Brendan's mother are estranged.

When twelve-year-old Lise spends the summer on an island in Maine with her self-reliant mother and bright--but oddly mute--younger brother, her formerly safe world is complicated by an aged Indian neighbor, her mother's childhood friend, and a hurricane.

Even though his classmates from first grade on have considered him strange and a loser, Daniel Zinkoff's optimism and exuberance and the support of his loving family do not allow him to feel that way about himself.

A pariah in his town and home for the results of his risk-taking behavior, eighteen-year-old Jake seeks adrenaline rushes to clear his dark thoughts, but when Salome, the girl he loves, gets caught up in taking chances, too, the consequences are devastating.

Afghan women Mariam and Laila grow close, despite their nearly twenty-year age difference and initial rivalry, as they suffer at the hands of a common enemy--their abusive, much-older husband, Rasheed.