Ben Mikaelsen

In 1922, Petey, who has cerebral palsy, is misdiagnosed as an idiot and institutionalized; sixty years later, after he is moved to a nursing home, he befriends a boy and shares with him the joy of life.

After a year in exile on an Alaskan island as punishment for severely beating a fellow student, Cole Matthews returns to school in Minneapolis having made peace with himself and his victim--but he finds that surviving the violence and hatred of high school is even harder than surviving in the wilderness.

When, protected by the branches of one of the trees she loves to climb, Gabriela witnesses the destruction of her Mayan village and the murder of nearly all its inhabitants, she vows never to climb again until, after she and her traumatised sister find safety in a Mexican refugee camp, she realizes that only by climbing and facing their fears can she and her sister hope to have a future.

In two parallel stories, a fourteen-year-old boy who is NASA's first Junior Astronaut and a fourteen-year-old Maasai herder in Kenya both edge into maturity while questioning their family traditions.

When thirteen-year-old Josh runs away to the mountains of Montana with an orphaned bear cub destined for laboratory testing, they both must fight for their lives in a sudden snowstorm.