January/February 2000
— A five-year-old girl contemplates the nature of waiting after missing a horseback ride, discovering through conversation with her father that waiting gives life meaning.
— Clara Schumann: Piano Virtuoso by Susanna Reich; Clarion Books: New York, 1999; $18 As her tender, pale fingers grasped the ivory keys of the grand piano, she could feel herself...
— A twelve-year-old faces peer pressure when her best friend Lauren shoplifts and tries to involve her, leading to difficult choices about friendship and integrity.
— A sixth-grader watches her imaginative pioneer game fall apart when popular kids mock it, realizing she and her friends are growing up and leaving childhood behind.
— During a military coup in Sierra Leone, a fifth-grader shelters with his embassy family, finding and symbolically discarding a bullet that represents the violence surrounding them.
— Seeing Lessons by Spring Hermann; Henry Holt and Company: New York, 1998; $15.95 This book takes place in Andover and Boston, Massachusetts during the 1830s. Blind at birth, a ten-year-old...
— A five-year-old girl sits by a lake at sunset, contemplating why everything in life requires waiting, until her father helps her understand its purpose.
— A young artist who draws the sunrise every morning struggles with her mother's acting ambitions for her, then finds hope after losing an art contest when her grandmother offers to...
— Eight-year-old Soon-Soon Wang flees Cultural Revolution China for America after her parents are taken by the government, leaving behind her best friend Xiao-Long.
— A young climber encounters a cougar on a mountain ledge and saves herself by singing the same lullaby she once used to tame her childhood cat.