In the shabby district called Tortilla Flat above Monterey, California lives a gang whose exploits compare to those of King Arthur's knights.

This is the story of how four loud, grubby urchins from the Australian outback find themselves in London for the first peacetime Christmas after years of war. But their new guardian hates children. He prefers the company of hundreds of snakes in his house - the Kensington Reptilarium. Fate lends Kick, Scruff, Bert and Pin a helping hand when outraged citizens call for the Reptilarium to be shut down. With the police about to descend, can the Caddy...

Taken in by a poor family in a rural village after the death of her father, Sunflower bonds with the family's only child, Bronze, who has not spoken since being traumatized by a terrible fire.

"This perennial Dickensian favorite about a miser's startling change of heart is illustrated by Italian artist Roberto Innocenti and reissued for the readers of all the Christmases Yet To Come"--

Jack Dahl has nothing left. Except his younger brother, Matty, who he'd do anything for. Even die for. Now with their mother gone, and their funds quickly dwindling, Jack needs to make a choice: lose his brother to foster care, or find the drug money that sent his father to prison. He chooses the money. Ava Bardem lives in isolation, a life of silence. For seventeen years her father has controlled her fate. He has taught her to love no one. Trust...

Acid Row. The name the beleaguered inhabitants give to their 'sink' estate. A no-man's land of single mothers and fatherless children - where angry, alienated youth controls the streets. Into this battleground comes Sophie Morrison, a young doctor visiting a patient in Acid Row. Little does she know that she is entering the home of a known pedophile ...and with reports circulating that a tormented child called Amy has disappeared, the vigilantes are...

Presents a short study of child labor situations around the world, and follows the experiences of thirteen-year-old Mehboob from India who has been working since age eight to help his family.

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote "The Underland" -- and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it's best to let the uncanny house and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling go to rot ... Opal is a lot of things -- orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic and part-time cashier...

"A novel about class, race, and the horrific, glassy sparkle of urban life, them chronicles the lives of the Wendalls, a family on the steep edge of poverty in the windy, riotous Detroit slums. Loretta, beautiful and dreamy and full of regret by age sixteen, and her two children, Maureen and Jules, make up Oates' vision of the American family: broken, marginal, and romantically proud. The novel's title, pointedly uncapitalized, refers to those Americans...