inner cities

Fourteen-year-old Shawn wonders if he would be better off starting high school in his mother's neigborhood, away from Compton, but the idea of leaving all his friends, and the beautiful Marisol, is less appealing.

All thirteen-year-old Raspberry can think of is making money so that she and her mother never have to worry about living on the streets again.

Follows Porsche Santiaga, a sharp-tongued, quick-witted young woman who refuses to accept her new life in group homes, foster care, and juvenile detention.

A story in free verse poetry in which Marcus, a boy from the inner city who suffers bullying, is grieving his sister's death, and has been labeled a troublemaker finds a way to cope with his anger with the help of an unlikely mentor, who teaches him to play chess.

All thirteen-year-old Raspberry can think of is making money so that she and her mother never have to worry about living on the streets again.

An inquisitive young boy who lives with his mother and younger sister in a rough housing project in New Haven, Connecticut, approaches his tenth birthday with a mixture of anticipation and worry.

Joseph, an old African-American man, finds a Mexican baby abandoned in a Dumpster and raises him in a rough Los Angeles neighborhood to know both African-American and Mexican American ways.

Growing up in the inner-city projects, DeShawn is reluctantly forced into the gang world by circumstances beyond his control.

When his eight-year-old brother is killed in a drive-by shooting, Hispanic teenager Martin Luna is torn between his thirst for revenge and the pleas of his mother, teacher, and girlfriend for him to resist becoming a gangbanger.