Frank Carlson Library

In a city ravaged by crime and corruption, 13-year-old orphan Caw's only friends are the murder of crows he has lived with since his parents flung him from their house aged only five. Caw lives in a treehouse in an abandoned city park, surviving on scraps of food and only communicating with his three crows. But a jailbreak at the prison forces him into contact with other humans -- particularly a girl called Lydia, who is attacked by the escaped prisoners...

"Coo, a ten-year-old girl raised by a flock of pigeons, delights in finally making human contact, but quickly learns that our world is more cruel and complicated than she could have guessed"--

After praying to God to fill the hole in her life left by the death of her twin sister, thirteen-year-old Merry finds an abandoned baby outside her house.

At first Curtis isn't worried when his mother doesn't come home after her all-night shift at the gas bar. For a time Curtis manages on his own, looking after himself and his five-year-old brother. But then the credit card maxes out and the landlord starts demanding the rent. Just in time the boys make friends with cranky old Mrs. Burt who lives across the street. With the neighbor the boys go on an adventure. But will they ever return to their mother?...

Thirteen-year-old Twig learns he was abandoned at birth and travels out of his Deepwoods home to find the place where he belongs.

Ten-year-old Solomon Snow, a foundling who was discovered with a distinctive silver spoon in his mouth, sets out to find his parents and receives help along the way from an aspiring writer, a precocious young circus performer, and several orphans.

"When eleven-year-old Sol arrives at the Ash House, desperate for a cure for his complex pain syndrome, he finds a community of strange children long abandoned by their mysterious Headmaster. The children at the Ash House want the new boy to love their home as much as they do. They give him a name like theirs. They show him the dorms and tell him about the wonderful oasis that the Headmaster has created for them. But the new boy already has a name....

In 1850s Pittsburgh, thirteen-year-old Owen leaves his younger brother and sneaks aboard a circus housed in a riverboat, where he befriends a freed slave, learns to work with elephants, and finally comes to terms with the choices he has made in his difficult life.

Evacuated to a remote Yorkshire valley during World War II, a homesick ten-year-old English girl discovers an abandoned baby and befriends a gypsy boy, despite local prejudice.

Twelve-year-old Lulu, burdened with caring for her sister, Serena, since their father disappeared, must learn to trust her new friends and community when secrets and lies catch up with her.