W. R Philbrick

At the beginning of eighth grade, learning disabled Max and his new friend Freak, whose birth defect has affected his body but not his brilliant mind, find that when they combine forces they make a powerful team.

Fourteen-year-old Max helps a younger girl escape from her abusive stepfather by running away with her to the distant town of Chivalry, Montana, searching for her real father.

After his mother's death, twelve-year-old Skiff Beaman decides that it is up to him to earn money to take care of himself and his father, so he undertakes a dangerous trip alone out on the ocean off the coast of Maine to try to catch a hugh bluefin tuna.

Douglas Deeds, a fifteen-year-old orphan, keeps a journal of his travels by wagon train as a member of the ill-fated Donner Party, which became stranded in the Sierra Nevada mountains in the winter of 1846-47.

When a dam fails and rushing waters sweep away their adult supervisors, five middle schoolers on a white-water rafting adventure are left alone with few supplies and the opportunity to forge powerful bonds as well as develop dangerous disagreements.

A twelve-year-old boy and his dog become trapped in New Orleans during the horrors of Hurricane Katrina.

"It's Maine, 1924, and the Ku Klux Klan is on the rise. Davy and Jo Michaud have been recently orphaned. Taken in by a distant relative-a famous aviator-they are now working with a group of stunt pilots who spend their time wing walking, leaping from plane to plane, and flying through fireworks! But though the stunts are dangerous, the real threat is building behind the scenes. The KKK is on the rise in Maine that summer, inspired by the racial fears...