Showing results for "Children of Paradise" in Growing Up & Facts of Life

Twelve-year-old Ruby Clyde Henderson's life turns upside down the day her mother's boyfriend holds up a convenience store and her mother is wrongly jailed for assisting with the crime. Ruby and her pet pig, Bunny, find their way to her estranged Aunt Eleanor's home. Aunt Eleanor is an ornery nun who lives in the midst of a peach orchard on Paradise Ranch. With a little patience, she and Ruby begin to get along. But Eleanor has secrets of her own - secrets that might mean more hard times for Ruby.

Martin longs to be a musician. But a piano wouldn't fit in his mobile home, even if his father would let him have one. Martin's father wants him to play baseball and forget about all that "sissy" music stuff. If it weren't for the harmonica he plays when he's out of the house, and the music he creates in his head when his father is yelling at him, Martin would have no music at all. Then he sees a violin for sale for $50 in a pawn shop window, and he can think of nothing else. There's just one problem: he only has $12.78.

In Jennifer L. Holm's New York Times bestselling, Newbery Honor winning middle grade historical fiction novel, life isn't like the movies. But then again, 11-year-old Turtle is no Shirley Temple She's smart and tough and has seen enough of the world not to expect a Hollywood ending. After all...