Alison McGhee

A father tells his young son the story behind each of his tattoos.

After a car accident in the Adirondacks leaves her older sister Ivy brain-dead, seventeen-year-old Rose struggles with her grief and guilt as she slowly learns to let her sister go.

Because their dreams of daring adventures go against the cautious teachings of their nations, Firefly and Cricket set out on their own, find a home with kindly Vole, and together help a grieving "miniature giant" named Peter.

Clean, cold, white snow! Snow for sledding. Snow for catching on your tongue. Snow for making a SNOWMAN! Is there anything as wonderful as SNOW? Is there any better friend than a SNOWMAN? Snow isn't forever, though. The wind shifts, the weather warms and snow melts into spring. The Snowman has become something else - the fog, the rain. But, how can this boy forget his good friend? He doesn't…and he doesn't have to. This title includes Read-Along...

Pablo, nearly ten, has many questions about his origins and how he arrived at Isla as a baby, but finding the answers may mean losing his lifetime companion, Birdy the parrot.

Since his father's suicide, Will, sixteen, has mainly walked, worked at Dollar Only, and tried to replicate his father's cornbread recipe, but the rape of his childhood friend shakes things up.

Practice makes perfect. And for a little girl facing her first recital of "Dance of the Wood Elves," so do artistry, imagination (those wood elves sure love to dance!), and lucky underwear for good measure. Is she nervous as she waits and waits for her turn on stage? Hoo boy, no! She's as cool as a cucumber! Every child who has felt the pressure of the spotlight will smile at this comical tale of bravado that turns a one note performance into an improvisation...

Clean, cold, white snow! Snow for sledding. Snow for catching on your tongue. Snow for making a SNOWMAN! Is there anything as wonderful as SNOW? Is there any better friend than a SNOWMAN? Snow isn't forever, though. The wind shifts, the weather warms and snow melts into spring. The Snowman has become something else - the fog, the rain. But, how can this boy forget his good friend? He doesn't…and he doesn't have to.

All the apprehension about school "firsts" is playfully presented in these reassuring stories. In Mrs. Watson Wants Your Teeth, advice from a "knowledgeable" second grader has the first grade worry-wart convinced that her new teacher is really a 300-year old alien who steals baby teeth from her students. This is especially worrisome since she has a secret: her first tooth is loose! A witty, and spot-on depiction of first-day-of-school jitters, this...

Winner of the Minnesota Book Award, author Alison McGhee pens tales shimmering with shrewd truth and wild imaginings. In this moving novel, she tells of the growing friendship between two oddly matched people as they share their very different world. With a missing father, sister, and grandfather-and a mother who refuses to explain-11-year-old Clara lives with many questions. When she begins interviewing an elderly immigrant for a school biography...