Frank Carlson Library

Peony lives with her sister, Magnolia, and her grandfather on a fruit farm outside the city. All Peony really wants is to be a bee. Even though she is only nine, and bees must be ten, Peony already knows all there is to know about being a bee and she is determined to achieve her dream. Life on the farm is a scrabble, but there is enough to eat and a place to sleep, and there is love. Then Peony's mother arrives to take her away from everything she...

Needing to earn money after his father's death during the influenza epidemic of 1918, thirteen-year-old Joshua works as a newspaper boy in Boston, one day finding himself in the vicinity of an explosion that sends tons of molasses coursing through the streets.

Luka, a Ukrainian boy working in a slave labor camp, plays dead after an explosion at the factory and escapes, eventually joining a resistance group that opposes both the Nazis and the Soviets, and through the danger of the guerilla fighting he has two overriding goals--find out if his parents are still alive, and reunite with Lida, a girl who was a friend in the labor camp.

To work off a family debt, ten-year-old Hastin leaves his desert village in India to work as a circus elephant keeper but many challenges await him, including trying to keep Nandita, a sweet elephant, safe from the cruel circus owner.

After a mining accident kills her father and leaves her brother missing, twelve-year-old Ana puts her dreams on hold and goes into the mine to help her family survive in their impoverished Bolivian silver mining community.

Samantha is determined to help nine-year-old Nellie, attending school for the first time, with her school work and learns a great deal herself about what it is like to be a poor child and work in a factory.