florida

Honu Mahau, a Polynesian girl, lives on the FL Keys. When she finds a strange boat and an old Spanish coin near her house, she discovers a mystery, one that may put her life in danger!.

The stories in this collection span characters, towns, decades, even centuries, but Florida?its landscape, climate, history, and state of mind?becomes its gravitational center: an energy, a mood, as much as a place of residence. Groff transports the reader, then jolts us alert with a crackle of wit, a wave of sadness, a flash of cruelty, as she writes about loneliness, rage, family, and the passage of time. With shocking accuracy and effect, she pinpoints the moments and decisions and connections behind human pleasure and pain, hope and despair, love and fury?the moments that make us alive.

Ten-year-old India Opal Buloni describes her first summer in the town of Naomi, Florida, and all the good things that happen to her because of her big ugly dog Winn-Dixie.

Illustrations and text present the history, geography, people, politics and government, economy, and social life and customs of Florida.

While helping her crippled grandfather by diving for sponges from the family boat after the death of her diver father, Alexandra discovers that someone is using their sponges as a hiding-place for smuggled cocaine.