Twelve-year-old Quijana is a biracial girl, desperately trying to understand the changes that are going on in her life; her mother rarely gets home before bedtime, her father suddenly seems to be trying to get in touch with his Guatemalan roots (even though he never bothered to teach Quijana Spanish), she is about to start seventh grade in the Texas town where they live and she is worried about fitting in--and Quijana suspects that her parents are...

"Guatemalan-American high school senior Millie Vargas struggles to balance her family's needs with her own ambitions, especially after her mother's employer, a Senate candidate, uses Millie as a poster child for 'deserving' immigrants"--

Deep in trouble,

Deep in the canyons

Fourteen-year-old Dylan Sands has come all the way from North Carolina to Big Bend National Park, on the Texas/Mexico border, to paddle the fabled Rio Grande. His partner in adventure is a local river rat, his cousin Rio. As the two are packing their boats for ten days in the canyons, six Black Hawk helicopters appear overhead and race across the river into Mexico.

The army won't tell the

...

"Yusuf is excited to start middle school in his small Texas town, but with the twentieth anniversary of the September 11 attacks coming up, suddenly it feels like the country's same anger and grief is all focused on his Muslim community"--

While visiting her friend Mia in Texas and helping at Aunt Suze's bed and breakfast, Helicity Dunlap gets caught in a derecho and loses track of her older brother, Andy.

December comes to Texas and there is a catfish fishing contest at Arrowhead Lake with a special prize awaiting the winning adult/child team; Kylie's brother and father are entered as one team, and Kylie Jean convinces her grandfather to enter with her as another team--and Kylie dreams of catching Granddaddy Whiskers, a legendary blue catfish that has eluded fishermen for years.

Hank the Cowdog must get used to a new dog called Happy, a yellow Labrador.

When Loper puts him on Cheapo brand dog food and he gets in trouble for eating out of Sally May's birdfeeder, Hank the Cowdog hopes that he can get back in their good graces by thwarting the coyotes' plan to go after the chickens.

With the threat of prairie fires looming, security expert Hank the Cowdog takes on extra duties as Head of Fire Safety, while trying to resist the mouth-watering hens in Sally May's chicken house.

After her mother's death, Willie must protect her younger siblings from the flesh-eating creatures that surround her town and is forced to enter the dangerous desert to find her father when he steals from the most powerful man in town.