Books with author Stephanie 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.

In a world weary from war and recovering from the aftermath of global warming, a new disease threatens to take over. Healthy people become monsters defying the laws of nature. While the threat of this disease spreads and the availability of adult recruits dwindles, the United Commonwealth Forces resorts to using children to become soldiers, training them to kill those who are infected. Ash Campbell is one of these children, taken against her will. Born with signs of the disease, she struggles to hide her affliction from those would would kill her. As Ash learns about the disease, she reveals herself to her closest companions, testing their loyalty and the lengths a friend will go to help another.

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?