Hard-hitting historical fiction

Ever since his father ran off two years before, fifteen-year-old Johnny Woods has struggled to help support his ma and five siblings, sacrificing his own schooling in the process. Still, there's been hardly enough money each month to make the rent, and Johnny's dream of a house in Brooklyn, away from the tenement slums, is out of reach.

Then Johnny discovers boxing. He is a natural-born fighter, with street smarts, determination, and an explosive uppercut. Although boxing is illegal in 1885 New York, Johnny powers his way through every...

Fleeing war-torn Cambodia in 1980, Dara, her mother, and her older brother find sanctuary in a refugee settlement on the Thailand border, but when fighting erupts, Dara finds herself separated from everyone and everything she loves.

On a scorching July day in 1950, a fabulous fat man drives into Wetumka, Oklahoma. F. Bam Morrison is selling tickets to Bohn's United Circus Shows, and the townspeople are buying--all, that is, except ol' man Swank, who says F. Bam Morrison is a two-faced weasel. Smitten with Morrison, ten-year-old Bobbie Jo Hailey--and mean Clara Jean Knox, whom she befriends--unwittingly joins the effort to bamboozle Wetumka. When Bobbie Jo realizes her mistake, Morrison is on his way out of town, leaving her disappointed but intact--and greatly enriched by her relationship with the flimflam man....

An incredible journey

"I don't know much, but I know what I know. I gotta go I gotta go I gotta go to Mexico " The creepy-crawly bug doesn't know why she does what she does. She only knows she has to do it. But making the journey seems impossible for the slow-moving critter, who has no idea what or where Mexico is. Then an everyday miracle occurs, bringing a transformation that will help her fulfill her destiny. Each autumn, millions of Monarch butterflies migrate from the central and eastern United States and Canada to colonies in the mountains of Mexico, where they mate...

Discovered among Rosemary Sutcliff 's papers after her death in 1992, Sword Song is the swashbuckling epic of a young Viking swordsman, banished from his home for unintentionally killing a man, who takes up a new life as a mercenary.

Tristan defeats Ireland's greatest warrior and gains the friendship of his uncle, the King of Cornwall, who entrusts him with a very special mission: to sail the seas in search of a queen.