Runaway Life

When Charlene’s father calls from jail, her life turns upside down. She moves from her beautiful home in Nebraska to inner-city Cleveland, Ohio, overnight. Now homeless, Charlene, her sister Cheyanne, and mother move into her judgmental aunt’s three-bedroom home on the Southeast Side with her seven cousins. She learns to live with roaches, switching schools every couple of months, visiting her father in prison, and keeping the family secret.

As he prepares to recite the Declaration of Independence before his eighth grade social studies class in California, the thing Francisco has feared for 10 years finally happens. La migra, the immigration police, come to his classroom and pick him up for deportation to Mexico. Soon back in the United States with a "green card", Francisco struggles through adolescence, working two or three jobs a day and striving to excel at school.

Through the long years of the Great Depression, Harper Flute watches with a child's clear eyes her family's struggle to survive in a hot and impoverished landscape. As life on the surface grows harsher, her brother Tin escapes ever deeper into a subterranean world of darkness and troubling secrets, until his memory becomes a myth barely whispered around the countryside.

Sixteen-year-old Boy’s never left home. When you’re the son of Frankenstein’s monster and the Bride, it’s tough to go out in public, unless you want to draw the attention of a torch-wielding mob. Boy’s only interactions with the world are through the Internet, where he’s a hacker extraordinaire who can hide his hulking body and stitched-together face behind a layer of code. When conflict erupts at home, Boy runs away and embarks on a cross-country road trip with the granddaughters of Jekyll and Hyde, who introduce him to malls and diners, love and heartbreak.

It's the school holidays in Snoops Bay, and Riz, Olly, Drew and Anton are looking for their next adventure. When they decide to visit the town's most unremarkable tourist spot, Bony Beach, they're shocked to discover a long-lost shipwreck that sunk to the bottom of the sea with treasure aboard. But their exploration of the ruin is quickly thwarted when they come face to face with the phantom figure of the ship's captain, Horatio Huxley, and accidentally put a curse on Snoops Bay. Undeterred, our heroes vow to get to the bottom of the mystery once and for all.

After a tragic accident resulting in the death of his mother, and the disappearance of his father, young Davie flees his hometown of Blackburn, unsure of what the future holds. Devastated, he must escape the vicious rumours about his mother as well as his memories of her. With nothing more than the shirt on his back, he sets off to find his father, a livelihood, and maybe a glimpse of happiness.

Quest One: Run Away Feet allows the listener to journey with Self-Elf as he steps into his fears, talks back to his thoughts, and uses his ability to adapt and get back on track when things don’t go as planned.

When Meg's parents go away for the weekend, letting Meg stay with fellow Pony Scout Jill, the Scouts are in for an extra-special sleepover! Meg, Jill, and their friend Annie get to tend Jill's ponies day and night. But when one of the Scouts forgets to latch a pony's stall, things start to get a little crazy. The Pony Scouts race to the rescue, and along the way they learn that being careful is an important key to being able to have fun. The Pony Scouts return in this charming I Can Read, a wonderful addition to the Pony Scouts series.

Every-child experiences are refreshingly depicted with reassurance, humor, and sensitivity in these satisfying stories. Award-winning narrator Laura Hamilton gives a delightful voice to the delicious character of Vera, a winning little girl whose stories of typical childhood experiences make every child feel special!