Joan Bauer

Newly orphaned and living with the half sister she hardly knows, twelve-year-old Olive rediscovers her hope when she starts training a guide dog puppy.

Sixth-grader Sugar and her mother lose their beloved house and experience the harsh world of homelessness.

Feeling scared and powerless when her father's anger escalates and her parents separate, twelve-year-old Anna spends the summer with her grandmother and decides to make a difference when she sees what seems to be a girl held against her will.

Sixteen-year-old Jenna gets a job driving the elderly owner of a chain of successful shoe stores from Chicago to Texas to confront the son who is trying to force her to retire, and along the way Jenna hones her talents as a saleswoman and finds the strength to face her alcoholic father. Jenna Boller is the confident, smart, & moral heroine of this novel that deals with the effects of alcoholism on a family & a girl's growing friendship with a wealthy,...

While compiling a genealogy of her family of successful attorneys, sixteen-year-old history buff Ivy Breedlove treks into the mountain wilderness to interview a reclusive aunt with whom she identifies and who in turn helps her to truly know herself and her family.

As sixteen-year-old Ellie pursues her two goals--growing the biggest pumpkin in Iowa and losing twenty pounds herself--she strengthens her relationship with her father and meets a young man with interests similar to her own.