Showing titles in Homelessness, Runaways & Poverty

Thirteen-year-old Hadi Toma and his family are displaced. At least that's what the Lebanese government calls them and the thousands of other Syrian refugees that have flooded into Beirut. But as Hadi tries to earn money to feed his family by selling gum on the street corner, he learns that many people who travel the city don't think they're displaced - they think that they don't belong in this country either. Each day he hears insults, but each day he convinces himself they don't matter, approaching the cars again and again. He hardly dares to dream anymore that this might change.

“This special book dares us to embrace audacious hope. Amber Appleton is my hero.” —Sara Zarr, author of Once Was Lost and National Book Award finalist Story of a Girl Amber Appleton lives in a bus. Ever since her mom’s boyfriend kicked them out, Amber, her mom, and her totally loyal...

Each discovery disturbs the arrangements of the known world, and it is our job to stay alert to all possibilities. LaVaughn believes she is keeping alert to all possibilities. She has made it through the projects, she’s gotten over heartbreak, she’s grown up, and now she’s been admitted to...

When Iggy Corso gets kicked out of high school, there’s no one for him to tell. His mother has gone off, his father is stoned on the couch, and because the phone’s been disconnected, even the social worker can’t get through. So he leaves a note and goes out to make something of his life...

Jolly is seventeen. She can’t really spell. She doesn’t have much of a job. And she has two little kids from two different, absent fathers. Jolly knows she can’t cope with Jilly and Jeremy all by herself. So she posts a notice on the school ­bulletin board: BABYSITTER NEEDED BAD. No one...

Fourteen-year-old Terry has parents who never paid him much attention. So when they both disappear after one of their all-too-frequent arguments, Terry isn’t exactly eager for them to come home. On his own, he occupies himself by assembling a car kit that’s been collecting dust in the garage for years. When the car is finished, Terry is pleased to discover it actually runs. Though he doesn’t know much about driving, he gets behind the wheel and heads west, with the notion of visiting an uncle in Oregon. But Terry’s plan takes a detour when he meets Shakespeare-quoting wanderer Waylon Jackson....

Working as a Wench - i.e. waitress - at a cheesy medieval-themed restaurant in the Chicago suburbs, Kit Sweetly dreams of being a Knight like her brother. She has the moves, is capable on a horse, and desperately needs the raise that comes with knighthood. Company policy allows only guys to be Knights. So when Kit takes her brother’s place, clobbers the Green Knight, and reveals her identity at the end of the show, she rockets into internet fame and a whole lot of trouble with the management. But this Girl Knight won’t go down without a fight.

Brody Fair feels like nobody gets him: not his overworked parents, not his genius older brother, and definitely not the girls in the projects set on making his life miserable. Then he meets Nico, an art student who takes Brody to Everland, a “knock-off Narnia" that opens its door at 11:21 p.m. each Thursday for Nico and his band of present-day misfits and miscreants.

Everything Aoife thought she knew about the world was a lie. There is no Necrovirus. And Aoife isn't going to succomb to madness because of a latent strain—she will lose her faculties because she is allergic to iron. Aoife isn't human. She is a changeling—half human and half from the land of...

Sixteen-year-old Chastity and her mother have been on the run since Chass was a baby, assuming new identities in every town. She doesn't know why they are running, who her father is, or even her real name. But then on the night of Chass's sixteenth birthday, her mother disappears. The cops find...

In an unnamed Third World country, in the not-so-distant future, three “dumpsite boys” make a living picking through the mountains of garbage on the outskirts of a large city. One unlucky-lucky day, Raphael finds something very special and very mysterious. So mysterious that he decides...

What's new in LaVaughn's life is Jody--a boy she knew as a child who's come back to the housing project where she lives. Jody is like a miracle: He smells like chlorine, he calls her "little buddy," he goes with her to the dance. It's just as if he's in love with her. Except not quite. As...

This diary of a runaway girl and her search for a home celebrates hope, resilience, and happy endings as only Wendelin Van Draanen, the author of Flipped and other acclaimed novels, can. Holly has run away before, but this time she actually gets away—and what at first felt like an escape...

A poignant coming-of-age novel about two best friends whose friendship is tested when they get the opportunity to leave their impoverished small town for an elite prep school. For fans of Looking for Alaska. Life in a small Appalachian town is not easy. Cash lost his mother to an opioid...

In the city of Lovecraft, the Proctors rule and a great Engine turns below the streets, grinding any resistance to their order to dust. The necrovirus is blamed for Lovecraft's epidemic of madness, for the strange and eldritch creatures that roam the streets after dark, and for everything that...

On a frosty morning sometime in the fourteenth century, in a village somewhere in England, a gift known only as Brat was sleeping in a dung heap. "You, girl. Are you alive or dead?" When she opened her eyes, she saw an important-looking woman with a sharp glance and a sharp nose and a wimple...

A window into a world most people see depicted only in seconds-long news reports, one that we all should look through in order to recognize the genuine humanity within. Asad lives in Gaza, in a tiny house, on a narrow street pocked by half-destroyed buildings, in a camp that looks shabby to him...

Luther T. Farrell has got to get out of Flint, Michigan. As his best friend Sparky says, “Flint’s nothing but the Titanic.” And his mother, a.k.a. the Sarge, says, “Take my advice and stay off the sucker path.” The Sarge milked the system to build an empire of slum housing and group...

Laurel Daneau has moved on to a new life, in a new town, but inside she's still reeling from the loss of her beloved mother and grandmother after Hurricane Katrina washed away their home. Laurel's new life is going well, with a new best friend, a place on the cheerleading squad and T-Boom...

Jacqueline Woodson is the 2018-2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature Twelve-year-old Marie is a leader among the popular black girls in Chauncey, Ohio, a prosperous black suburb. She isn't looking for a friend when Lena Bright, a white girl, appears in school. Yet they are...