Books with author Stephanie S. Tolan

Jake Semple is a scary kid. Word has it that he burned down his old school and then was kicked out of every other school in his home state. Only weeks into September, the middle school in Traybridge, North Carolina, has thrown him out, too.Now there's only one place left that will take him -- a home school run by the most outrageous, forgetful, chaotic, quarrelsome family you'll ever meet. Each and every Applewhite is an artist through and through -- except E.D., the smart, scruffy girl with a deep longing for order and predictability. E.D. and Jake, so nearly the same age, are quickly paired in the family's first experiment in "cooperative education."The two clash immediately, of course. The only thing they have in common is the determination to survive the family's eccentricities. In Stephanie S. Tolan's hilarious tale, a local production of The Sound of Music directed, stagecrafted, choreographed, and costumed by Apple-whites -- brings the family together and shows E.D. and Jake the value of the special gifts they've had all along.

“My grandfather is crazy.” So eleven year old Kerry Warren begins her story of the summer in which her family confronts the realities of aging. Grandpa has been part of their family for almost as long as she can remember. He taught Kerry to swim and made kites for her brother Matt, and the three of them collected rocks. Kerry can’t remember now when things started to change, when her life and Matt’s began to close out Grandpa. Suddenly there wasn’t time for him: she had places to go after school with her friend Jeannie, and Matt was busy with baseball practice and his stereo. And now Grandpa is different. He says strange things and sometimes thinks Kerry is the sister who took care of him as a child. There is worried talk in the family about nursing homes and the uncertainty of the future. As Kerry and her family live through the tensions of the summer, she finds that Grandpa has taken over the central position in her life from which he had been banished. She learns to know and love him in a new way. And as Grandpa’s past becomes for him the present, Kerry acquires a new understanding of her own place in the family.Her grandfather's increasing senility brings Kerry to a new understanding of both him and her own place in the family.

Charley knows a lot about pain. She endures it when she walks on her newly shattered leg, she sees it when her father buries himself in an eighty-hour work week, and she runs from it when she sees photographs her mother took before her death. Then one day, Charley meets a wild, abused dog that knows as much about pain as she does, and, despite herself, she feels an immediate connection and vows to help him. But how will one heartbroken girl help mend the battered spirit of an untamable dog?

Learning to walk again is the easy part.For twelve-year-old Charley, recovering from the accident that shattered her leg is nowhere near as difficult as facing the solitude of a summer without her best friend and with a father who does nothing, now, but work. Solitude means time to think, time to hear for the first time the awful silence left in her world two years ago by her mother's death.But the summer holds a surprise for Charley, in the form of a mysterious dog who appears in the woods across the lake from her home. In order to connect with this wild spirit she names Coyote, Charley will have to do more than just walk. She will have to follow Coyote into the heart of her memories: the woods her mother loved so much. And she will have to learn to listen past the silence.This unsentimental, unforgettable story comes straight from the heart of Newbery Honor author Stephanie S. Tolan. As she describes Charley's difficult emotional and physical journey, she weaves together themes of nature, family, and love into a complex and powerful portrait of recovery.