Showing results for "Literature" in Homelessness, Runaways & Poverty

Street Prince is a tender portrait of a twelve-year-old boy, grappling with tragic losses and unforgiving poverty. After giving birth, his teenage mother abandoned him at the hospital, leaving a scribbled note: His name is Lamont, I am no fit mother. Keep my baby boy. Letty J. His maternal grandmother "Elma" raises him as her own child. Thought to be dead, her estranged daughter returns home with two other children. A disastrous homecoming party takes place. Lamont meets a new classmate, the prim and proper Esmaria. The children plan to sit together at church the next day.

Cordelia Lu Hankins is the half Caucasian, half Chinese - and all albino. She has grown up in a remote lumber town with her distant father and a giant stepmother nicknamed Babe (after Paul Bunyan's blue ox), convinced she is ugly. Then, in the summer of 1918, when she is fourteen, she falls in love with the dashing Squirl. One day they meet on the mountain and Cordy receives her first kiss, as well as a wild ride down a log flume that gets Squirl fired.

Following a devastating betrayal, Beth Bradley, a sixteen-year-old graffiti artist, is suspended from school. Running from a home that she shares with her father who has never recovered after Beth's mother's death, Beth stumbles into the hidden city and meets Filius Viae, London's asphalt-hued crown prince. And her timing couldn't have been more perfect.

When it happened Miguel was sent to Juvi. The judge only gave him a year in a group home - said he had to write in a journal so some counselor could try to figure out how he thinks. The judge had no idea that he'd actually done Miguel a favor. Ever since it happened Miguel’s mom can't even look him in the eye. Any home besides his would be a better place to live. But Miguel didn’t bet on meeting Rondell or Mong or on any of what happened after they broke out. He only thought about Mexico and getting across the border to where he could start over....

When a black South American soccer star signs on to a team in the country’s racist south, headlines blare. And when he falls for the sensual Desmerelda, a stunning white pop singer and daughter of a wealthy politician, their sudden and controversial marriage propels the pair to centre stage, where they burn in the media spotlight. But celebrity attracts enemies; some very close to home. And its dazzle reaches into the city’s hidden corners, exposing a life of grit and desperation the glitterati could never imagine.

Running away from home hasn’t solved Iphigenia Murphy’s problems. In fact, it’s only a matter of time before they’ll catch up with her. Iffy is desperate to find her long-lost mother, and, so far, in spite of the need to forage for food and shelter and fend off an unending number of creeps, living in Queens’ Forest Park has felt safer than living at home. But as the summer days get shorter, it all threatens to fall apart.

At fifteen, Iris is a hobo of sorts - no home, no family, no plan. Her mother died when she was six, and her selfish father hires her out as a companion to a country doctor's elderly mother. Iris, stuck in the middle of 1920s rural Missouri, discovers that "hobo" is short for "homeward bound," and cultivates an eccentric cast of folks into family, creating the home she never had. But when she learns that a neighboring tenant farmer may have had more than his hands on his pregnant daughter, Iris must intervene to save the girl and her unborn baby.

When Michael saw a chance to leave town with a traveling carnival a year ago, he took it. Back then, his home life was spinning violently out of control. The carnival, with its "no questions asked" policy, seemed like a welcome escape. But now Michael's job has brought him back to Miami, where his mother is on trial for murder, making him wonder how much longer he can hide from his past... and his future.

Teenager Moss Trawnleyis in desperate need of work, and so he decides to headout west as a member of Roosevelt's Civilian Conservation Corps to help protect Montana's wildlife from devastating erosion and wildfires. Despite the grueling work, Moss has time to play baseball, make lifelong friends, and rediscover what he almost lost in the Great Depression: himself. Bringing an important era of U.S. history to life, this rivetingcoming-of-age story will appeal to any teen who has dreamed of adventure and survival in the great outdoors.

In a dying country town lives Satchel O'Rye, a young man fighting the future; Chelsea Piper, a young woman fighting the past; and a long-lost creature that can teach them both the art of survival. Stripes of the Sidestep Wolf is a shimmering, ultimately joyful novel, a story of journeying towards courage and freedom, of finding the will to live a life beyond expectation.

What do you do with your last day on Earth? There are 27 hours and 15 minutes left until a meteor strikes North America, and for Emerson and everyone else who didn't leave, the world will end. But Emerson's world already ended when she ran away from home last year. Since then she has lived on the streets, relying on her wits and her friend, Vince, to help her find places to sleep and food to eat.

When her best guy friend falls victim to a vicious hate crime, 16-year-old Cat sets out to discover who in her small town did it. Richly atmospheric, this daring mystery mines the secrets of a tightly knit Southern community and examines the strength of will it takes to go against everyone you know in the name of justice.

Pen's life is about secrets: the secret of the city's spirits, deities and monsters, living just beyond the notice of modern Londoners; the secret of Pen's intricate scars that disfigure her so cruelly; and the most closely guarded secret of all: Parva, her mirror-sister, forged from her reflections in a school bathroom mirror.

In this dazzling, hilarious, and heartbreaking debut, Joel Higgins grapples with the aftermath of a tragic loss as he tries to make sense of the problems he's sees all around him with the help of banned books, Winnie-the-Pooh, a field of asparagus, and many pairs of socks.

Allison is in danger at home. Her stepmother has run away and her father is getting worse. So she runs away too and with no where to live finds herself hiding out, miles from home, in an elderly woman’s shed. But this woman, Marla, has dementia and doesn’t recognise her as Allison, believing she is an old friend from her past called Toffee. So this is who Allison becomes, morphing into a person Marla usually knows and trusts but sometimes fears and fights. Eventually Allison’s stepmother shows up, armed with a new baby girl, a new sibling.