"Beatrice Carraway has dreams. Although she's aged out of the childhood pageant circuit, she's intent on carrying her talents all the way to the big screen--if only she can escape the poverty of West Dallas first. But as the Great Depression drags the working class further and further under, Beatrice struggles just to keep herself, her mother, and her younger sister afloat. After a string of failed auditions, she feels defeated.And then in walks Jack...

"On the run after committing a crime and deserting the Civilian Conservation Corp in 1935, Harlan Jensen has been riding the rails and living in fear that someone will recognize him. Hunger causes him to jump off a train at the Meyer farm in rural West Pottawattamie County, Iowa, where he plans to work just long enough to earn a square meal and then be on his way. Elsie Meyer, the farmwife who feeds him, knows more about God's plan for his life than...

"Street-savvy, almost-thirteen-year-old Aaron Broom is guarding his father's car when he witnesses a robbery gone wrong in a jewelery store across the street. To Aaron's shock, his father, a traveling watch salesman in the wrong place at the wrong time, is fingered as the prime suspect in the murder. Despite seeing the real killer flee the scene, Aaron can't do much to help in the moment--no one will take a kid's word for it. Undaunted, Aaron enlists...

"In this book, early fluent readers will learn about the causes, main events, key players, and lasting impacts of the Great Depression. Interesting photos and carefully leveled text will engage young readers as they learn about this important period in American history." --

Loosely based on Homer's "Odyssey", this is the story of three convicts-- escapees from a prison farm in Mississippi-- and their adventure as they travel home in hopes of recovering buried loot before it's lost forever in a flood.

A young girl enlists the help of her friends to solve a robbery in her home that threatens to put her family's house into foreclosure, after her father leaves town to look for work and her mother takes in borders to make ends meet.

During the Great Depression six-year-old Marvel, her seven siblings, and their mother find a tar-paper shack in the woods and, over the course of a year, turn it into a home. Based on the author's grandmother's childhood; includes historical notes.