Myra, a high school senior, will do almost anything to win a contest and earn money for a study trip to the Galapagos Islands, which would mean getting away from her demanding family life in Utah and ex-boyfriend Erik, but Erik is set on winning the same contest.

Eleven-year-old Emma's life in Tokyo changes for the worse when she and her American mother, who is pregnant, must move in with her Japanese grandmother the summer before 9/11 changes the world.

Fifth-grader Penny writes a series of letters to her future sibling, including facts about their Oakland, California, home, questions about whether their moms will ever marry, and especially that he or she is loved.

"Thirteen-year-old Oz struggles to fit in at his new school, stop causing trouble, and support his sister with her own unexpected problem"--

Unhappy that his parents are expecting a baby and that his birthday party will be nothing special this year, fifth-grader Hank decides to celebrate by doing his favorite things, with only his new pet tarantula, Rosa, for company.

Rhyming text shows an appreciation of the joy and excitement of the different ways a family can grow.

In England, newly pregnant seventeen-year-old Hattie and her gin-drinking great-aunt Gloria, who is in the early stages of dementia, set out together on a road trip of self-discovery--Gloria to finally confront the secrets of her past before they are wiped from her memory forever and Hattie to face the hard choices that will determine her future.

"The ghost of a 19th century Irish immigrant to Minnesota watches over three contemporary American teenagers who live on the plot of land she did as they try to terminate an unwanted pregnancy"-- "How quickly everything in the world disintegrates. Everything but the loneliness of young women." So begins The Whitsun Daughters, a story of three girls in a small Midwestern town, narrated by the ghost of a young Irish immigrant who, over a century earlier,...

"Seventeen-year-old Mira Fuller-Jensen was adopted by her moms at birth. All she knows about her biological mother is that she was a high-school student from India who went back to India after giving birth. Although Mira loves her moms, she's always felt like a misfit in her mostly white community. That starts to change when Nikhil Verma transfers to her school from Mumbai. They become fast friends and he helps Mira connect to her heritage through...

A year ago at the elite Marshall Summer Naval School, Margaret Moore presumably drowned herself from heartbreak, but this summer, the remaining girls from Deck Five will ensure Margaret's story is heard. Each summer the girls of Deck Five come back to Marshall Naval School. They sail on jewel-blue waters; they march on green drill-fields; they earn sunburns and honors. They push until they break apart and heal again, stronger. Each summer Margaret...