Frank Carlson Library

After the death of the beloved aunt who has raised her, twelve-year-old Summer and her uncle Ob leave their West Virginia trailer in search of the strength to go on living. Twelve-year-old Summer, her classmate Cletus, and her grieving Uncle Ob set off across West Virginia in search of a "Small Medium at Large" in fond hopes of reaching Aunt May beyond the grave. Their journey is heartening, funny, and altogether unforgettable.

Eleven-year-old Fig enrolls in an art class to better understand her father, a composer and pianist whose mental illness she tries to conceal from classmates, neighbors, and social services.

After her mother's death, Julie goes to live with Aunt Cordelia, a spinster schoolteacher, where she experiences many emotions and changes as she grows from seven to eighteen.

In 1849, a twelve-year-old girl who calls herself Lucy is distraught when her mother moves the family from Massachusetts to a small California mining town, where Lucy helps run a rough boarding house and looks for comfort in books while trying to find a way to get "home."

Mary O'Malley's only brother, Jonny is losing his battle to drugs and addiction and her mother is absent and distracted. It seems the only person who might understand is Griffen Connolly, whose older sister runs with Jonny in the wrong crowd. Mary thought Griff was too cool, too popular for her. But now he wants to hang out with her, and listen. When two girls Mary thought were her friends decide to slam another girl online, Mary tries to look the...

This year is not going at all how Benny Barrows expected. He hasn't gotten any better at riding a bike -- even though his brother George, who's autistic, can actually do tricks. His best friend moved away and he's having trouble finding a new one. His teacher is suddenly acting very strange. And worst of all, Benny worries he's to blame for the accident that sent his dad to the hospital. When his principal announces a contest that will recognize students...

When her brother is sent to fight in Vietnam, twelve-year-old Jamie begins to reconsider the army world that she has grown up in.

"It’s the summer before fifth grade, and for Ferris Wilkey, it is a summer of sheer pandemonium: Her little sister, Pinky, has vowed to become an outlaw. Uncle Ted has left Aunt Shirley and, to Ferris’s mother’s chagrin, is holed up in the Wilkey basement to paint a history of the world. And Charisse, Ferris’s grandmother, has started seeing a ghost at the threshold of her room, which seems like an alarming omen given that she is also feeling...

The journal of a fourteen-year-old girl, kept the last year she lived on the family farm, records daily events in her small New Hampshire town, her father's remarriage, and the death of her best friend.

Clete's father is killed in an automobile accident and his mother drinks and beats him, so he runs away from home.