Karen Hesse

In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.

In 1860 and 1861, while working in her father's lighthouse on an island off the coast of Delaware, fifteen-year-old Amelia records in her diary how the Civil War is beginning to devastate her divided state.

Two Jewish sisters, escapees of the infamous Warsaw ghetto, devise a plan to thwart an attempt by the Gestapo to intercept food bound for starving people behind the dark Wall.

Maybelle, Jack, and Eddie want to help Ma by putting something extra on the table, so they set out in the dark to take potatoes from a nearby field, but when they arrive home and empty their potato sacks, they are surprised by what they see.

Now I didn't believe a broken-down old unicorn could make wishes come true...not for a minute. But, what if it could? Mags has a lot to wish for, a nice house with a mama who isn't tired out from work; a normal little sister; a brother who doesn't mooch for food; and, once in a while, she'd like some new clothes for school. When her sister Hannie finds a stuffed unicorn, Mags's wishes start to come true. She knows the unicorn can't really be magic,...

Newbery Medalist Karen Hesse emerses readers in a small Vermont town in 1924 with this haunting and harrowing tale. Leanora Sutter. Esther Hirsh. Merlin Van Tornhout. Johnny Reeves . . .These characters are among the unforgettable cast inhabiting a small Vermont town in 1924. A town that turns against its own when the Ku Klux Klan moves in. No one is safe, especially the two youngest, twelve-year-old Leanora, an African-American girl, and six-year-old...

From the Newbery Award winning author of Out of the Dust. Mila becomes famous around the world when she is rescued from an unpopulated island off the coast of Florida. Years ago, Mila went missing from a boat crash, and she has been raised by dolphins from the age of four.Researchers teach Mila language and music. But she also learns about rules and expectations, about locked doors and broken promises, disappointment and betrayal.The more Mila finds...

Codie loves to spend time with her favorite aunt, Alix. Her aunt is a talented seamstress, and Codie knows that the perfect gift for Alix's new baby is a handmade blanket. Codie wants to have the blanket done before the baby is born. Suddenly, the baby is coming early. Will Codie be able to finish the blanket in time?