facing fear
— After her mother's death, a girl obsessively fills her life with activities until a poetry assignment about sadness breaks through her denial.
— An 8-year-old processes 9/11 through the contrast between her safe home life, library escapes, and the frightening images on TV, wondering about children in other countries.
— A Chinese mother faces an impossible choice when officials demand she give up one of her two children under the one-child law, ultimately deciding to leave China.
— A boy finds a freezing kitten in the snow and fights to save her, discovering his mother's hidden past with pets and her fear of losing them again.
— A boy discovers a hidden world beneath his grandparents' farm where woodpecker-rabbit hybrids attack him with hot embers and ice until his grandfather rescues him.
— A homesick boy dreads going to sleep-away camp but discovers acceptance and friendship through a baseball game where his teammates encourage rather than mock him.
— During a Nazi raid in occupied Denmark, a Danish girl hides her Jewish friend Leah in a closet, saved when a German soldier secretly pockets Leah's dropped Star of David...
— A young enslaved man flees through dark woods pursued by slave-catchers, finds what seems to be a safe house on the Underground Railroad, but is captured when the hiding place...
— A young baseball pitcher finds a mysterious sphere that allows him to travel back in time and prevent a fatal car accident that would have killed his best friend.
— A mountaineer separated from his team in a whiteout falls into a crevasse, is rescued by a yeti, and makes a harrowing solo descent to reach base camp.