"Alisak, Prany, and Noi--three orphans united by devastating loss--must do what is necessary to survive the perilous landscape of 1960s Laos. When they take shelter in a bombed out field hospital, they meet Vang, a doctor dedicated to helping the wounded at all costs. Soon the teens are serving as motorcycle couriers, delicately navigating their bikes across the fields filled with unexploded bombs, beneath the indiscriminate barrage from the sky....

Eleven-year-old Ada's clubfoot has been fixed at last, and she knows now that she's not what her mother said she was - damaged and deranged. But soon Ada learns that she's not a daughter anymore either. Who is she now? World War II rages on, and Ada and her brother move with their guardian, Susan, into a cottage with the iron-face Lady Thorton and her daughter. Life in the crowded home is tense. Then Ruth moves in. Ruth, a Jewish girl, from Germany....

Based on the lives, rescue, and continuing friendship of British evacuees Bess Walder, 15, and Beth Cummings, 14, who spent fourteen hours in the North Atlantic with their hands grasped across their overturned lifeboat after the Nazis torpedoed the SS City of Benares on route to Canada in 1940. Includes historical notes.

When a wildfire threatens Simone's home, she and Má must rush to take shelter. Guided by her own creativity, and buoyed by Má's memories of her childhood in Việt Nam, Simone navigates her way through an all-too-common crisis. This powerful story, straddling two generations and two countries, shows how communities come together in tough times, and how the youngest can imagine the path to a better future.--Book jacket.