Books in Sandpiper Houghton Mifflin Books series

Geoffrey Groundhog has become a local celebrity for successfully predicting how long winter will last. Everyone awaits his prediction each February 2, when he emerges from his burrow to look for his shadow. But Geoffrey’s fame has grown out of control—and so has the commotion surrounding his burrow! With television lights and cameras crowding him, he can’t even see the ground, much less his shadow. How will he make his spring prediction? How will anyone know if they should wax their surfboards or their skis?

A twelve-year-old boy learns about death and the conflicts that grip his Central American country when he's pressed into military service and trained as a soldier. "In constructing her story, Moeri faced a formidable challenge: how to look at a war that uses children for fodder and make it comprehensible, even reasonable, without glorifying its existence or rendering her story completely hopeless. She succeeds, portraying complicated emotions in terms children can understand." -- Booklist