authentic voice
— A boy ignores earthquake warnings to go skateboarding with his friend, then gets trapped when a major quake hits the skate park and the building collapses.
— A girl falls from a tree house in 1949 and awakens from a seventeen-year coma to find her family aged, her best friend married to her brother, and the boy...
— A boy remembers his grandmother through the landscape she loved — hot air balloons, hilltop trees, vineyards — and the moment of scattering her ashes.
— Three cousins rowing to a Maine lighthouse are caught in a sudden storm, their boat capsizes, and they barely make it to shore alive.
— A sixth-grade violinist, the youngest finalist in a school competition, plays brilliantly but doesn't place, learning to transform disappointment into determination for next year.
— Ed plays basketball with his friend Dave before a school bingo night where he comes within one number of winning an air-hockey table, losing to an elderly woman.
— A boy on his first duck hunt with his father struggles between wanting to please his dad and his inability to kill the mallard in his sights.
— A girl picks a fight with her sister over blanket distribution, ignores her conscience, loses the argument she started, and learns to listen to that small inner voice.
— A young ballet dancer overcomes stage fright to perform as Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, discovering that her emotional connection to dance matters more than technical perfection.
— A Jewish boy flees to Switzerland with an aging WWI veteran during the Nazi occupation, learning to see beyond hero worship to understand human complexity.