Faced with the difficulties of growing up and choosing a religion, a twelve-year-old girl talks over her problems with her own private God.

"Our young narrator doesn't like itchy hats or cold wind, and she especially doesn't like going places she's never been before. But she reluctantly agrees to join her mom at an ice festival, where they watch sculptors chisel and drill until it's too cold to watch anymore. That night the girl discovers that she has lost the horse figurine she'd brought with her, and she wishes she'd never gone . . . until the next night, when they return to the festival...

As she struggles to recover and survive, seventeen-year-old homeless Charlotte "Charlie" Davis cuts herself to dull the pain of abandonment and abuse.

"After losing almost everything in the Great Depression, Ellie’s family is forced to leave their home in town and start over in the untamed wilderness of nearby Echo Mountain. Ellie has found a welcome freedom, and a love of the natural world, in her new life on the mountain. But there is little joy after a terrible accident leaves her father in a coma. An accident unfairly blamed on Ellie. Ellie is a girl who takes matters into her own hands,...

Twelve--year-old Aisulu defies the expectations of her Kazakh family and tradition to train an eagle in order to save her brother, Serik, and prevent her family from giving up their nomadic life forever.

Minli, an adventurous girl from a poor village, buys a magical goldfish, and then joins a dragon who cannot fly on a quest to find the Old Man of the Moon in hopes of bringing life to Fruitless Mountain and freshness to Jade River.

First published in 1903, "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" is the charming and classic children's novel beloved the world over. Written by the American author and educator Kate Douglas Wiggin, it is the story of young and poor Rebecca Rowena Randall, who goes to live with her spinster aunts in the town of Riverboro when she is ten years-old. Rebecca's father had died three years before and the family farm had become heavily indebted. In order to ease the...

A simplified version of the tale of orphaned, eleven-year-old Pollyanna, who comes to live with austere and wealthy Aunt Polly, bringing happiness to her aunt and other members of the community through her philosophy of gladness.

In 1573, the crippled, scorned, and destitute Meggy Swann goes to London, where she meets her father, an impoverished alchemist, and eventually discovers that although her legs are bent and weak, she has many other strengths.

First published in 1923, "Emily of New Moon" is the first of three novels in a series by Lucy Maud Montgomery, the author of famous "Anne of Green Gables" books. The story centers around the life of Emily Starr, a young orphan who is raised by relatives after her father dies of tuberculosis. Montgomery based the character of Emily on her own true-life story and often remarked that her personality and that of the Canadian orphan were very similar....