When her father goes to fight in World War II, Elizabeth goes with her mother and sister to her grandfather's house where she learns to face up to the always puzzling and often cruel realities of the adult world.

"For Gabriel Haberlin, life seems pretty close to perfect in the small southern town of Birdsong, USA. But on his twelfth birthday, his point of view begins to change. It all starts when he comes face-to-face with one of the worst drivers in town while riding his new bicycle--an accident that would have been tragic if Mr. Meriwether Hunter hadn't been around to push him out of harm's way. After the accident, Gabriel and Meriwether become friends when...

In 1941 a black youth, sadistically teased by two white boys in rural Mississippi, severely injures one of them with a tire iron and enlists Cassie's help in trying to flee the state. Set in Mississippi in 1941, The Road to Memphis describes three harrowing, unforgettable days in the life of an African-American high school girl dreaming of law school. Caught up in the center of tense racial dramas unfolding around her, Cassie Logan is forced to confront...

When an eleven-year-old boy takes over a friend's newspaper route in July, 1959, in Memphis, his debilitating stutter makes for a memorable month.

In 1911, Turner Buckminster hates his new home of Phippsburg, Maine, but things improve when he meets Lizzie Bright Griffin, a girl from a poor, nearby island community founded by former slaves that the town fathers--and Turner's--want to change into a tourist spot.

Two lonely characters, one black and one white, meet on the street and become friends.

To thank Miss Eula for her wonderful Sunday chicken dinners, three children sell decorated eggs to buy her a beautiful Easter hat.

When Aunt Callie sends Cassie Logan and her brothers for medicine, the four children head nervously for the Wallace store despite their parents' warnings never to go there. And sure enough they find themselves bracing for trouble as they witness Mr. Tom Bee, an old black man, calling the white storekeeper by his first name. The year is 1933, the place Mississippi, and any child knows that certain things just aren't done. What follows is shocking and...

After moving with her mother and deaf brother to Grandma's small Georgia town in the 1960s, Alice copes with feelings of isolation by befriending the elderly black woman who lives next door.

In 1863, fifteen-year-old Claire, the daughter of an Irish mother and a black father, faces ugly truths and great danger when Irish immigrants, enraged by the Civil War and a federal draft, lash out against blacks and wealthy "swells" of New York City.