Catalog Search Results
2) Free lunch
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English
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Description
"A distinctive new voice: Rex Ogle's story of starting middle school on the free lunch program is timely, heartbreaking, and true. Free Lunch is the story of Rex Ogle's first semester in sixth grade. Rex and his baby brother often went hungry, wore secondhand clothes, and were short of school supplies, and Rex was on his school's free lunch program. Grounded in the immediacy of physical hunger and the humiliation of having to announce it every day...
3) Ethan Frome
Author
Language
English
Description
A struggling young farmer, Ethan Frome labors under the weight of a miserable marriage. His wife, Zeena, is cold, self-absorbed, and ailing. Zeena invites her cousin Mattie to come live at their farm and do the housework. Soon after her arrival, she and Ethan fall in love. Should they run away together, abandoning Zeena and the farm? The situation soon forces them to take action.
4) Crenshaw
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Language
English
Description
"A story about a homeless boy and his imaginary friend that proves in unexpected ways that friends matter, whether real or imaginary"--
5) Burn
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Language
English
Description
On a cold Sunday evening in early 1957, Sarah Dewhurst waited with her father in the parking lot of the Chevron gas station for the dragon he'd hired to help on the farm... Sarah Dewhurst and her father, outcasts in their little town of Frome, Washington, are forced to hire a dragon to work their farm, something only the poorest of the poor ever have to resort to. The dragon, Kazimir, has more to him than meets the eye, though. Sarah can't help but...
7) Punching bag
Author
Language
English
Description
"The companion to Rex Ogle's award-winning Free Lunch is a searing account of adolescence in a household torn by domestic violence. Punching Bag is the compelling true story of a high school career defined by poverty and punctuated by outbreaks of domestic abuse. Rex Ogle, who brilliantly mapped his experience of hunger in Free Lunch, here describes his struggle to survive; reflects on his complex, often paradoxical relationship with his passionate,...
Author
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English
Description
"Rex Ogle's companion to Free Lunch and Punching Bag weaves humor, heartbreak, and hope into life-affirming poems that honor his grandmother's legacy. In his award-winning memoir Free Lunch, Rex Ogle's abuela features as a source of love and support. In this companion-in-verse, Rex captures and celebrates the powerful presence a woman he could always count on--to give him warm hugs and ear kisses, to teach him precious words in Spanish, to bring him...
Author
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English
Description
Jack Morton has nothing left. Except his younger brother, Matty, who he'd do anything for. Even die for. Now with their mother gone, and their funds quickly dwindling, Jack needs to make a choice: lose his brother to foster care, or find the drug money that sent his father to prison. He chooses the money. Ava Bardem lives in isolation, a life of silence. For seventeen years her father has controlled her fate. He has taught her to love no one. Trust...
12) Oliver Twist
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English
Description
Oliver Twist is a classic tale of a boy of unknown parentage born in a workhouse and brought up under the cruel conditions to which pauper children were exposed in the Victorian England. With this novel, Dickens did not merely write a topical satire on the workhouse system and the role of the 1834 New Poor Law in fostering criminality. He created a moral fable about the survival of good, a romance, and a gripping story in which he exploited suspense...
13) Thirst
Author
Language
English
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Description
"A heroic girl in Mumbai fights for her belief that water should be for everyone. Minni lives in the poorest part of Mumbai, where access to water is limited to a few hours a day and the communal taps have long lines. Lately, though, even that access is threatened by severe water shortages and thieves who are stealing this precious commodity--an act that Minni accidentally witnesses one night. Meanwhile, in the high-rise building where she just started...
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English
Description
Originally published in 1890, this is the classic indictment of slum life, written by one of the most famous reformers of the nineteenth century. "How the Other Half Lives: Studies Among the Tenements of New York" explained not only the living conditions in New York slums, but also in the sweatshops in some tenements which paid workers only a few cents a day. The book explains the plight of working children; they would work in factories and at other...
Author
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English
Description
When his father suddenly dies, Nicholas Nickleby is sent by his uncle to Dotheboys Hall to work as a teacher, but when Nicholas discovers that the headmaster, Wackford Squeers, maliciously bullies the students, he must decide whether to stay, or leave and allow his uncle to cut off support for his family.
18) Make lemonade
Author
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English
Description
In order to earn money for college, fourteen-year-old LaVaughn babysits for a teenage mother.
19) The lucky ones
Author
Language
English
Description
"It's 1967, and eleven-year-old Ellis Earl Brown has big dreams. He's going to grow up to be a teacher or a lawyer--or maybe both--and live in a big brick house in town. There'll always be enough food in the icebox, and his mama won't have to run herself ragged looking for work as a maid in order to support Ellis Earl and his eight siblings and niece, Vera. So Ellis Earl applies himself at school, soaking up the lessons that Mr. Foster teaches his...
20) X: a novel
Author
Language
English
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Description
Malcolm Little's parents have always told him that he can achieve anything, but from what he can tell, that's a pack of lies--after all, his father's been murdered, his mother's been taken away, and his dreams of becoming a lawyer have gotten him laughed out of school. There's no point in trying, he figures, and lured by the nightlife of Boston and New York, he escapes into a world of fancy suits, jazz, girls, and reefer. But Malcolm's efforts to...