Ocean State Libraries

While hoping to work as the clown in an amusement park dunk tank on the New Jersey shore the summer before his junior year in high school, Chad faces his best friend's serious illness, hassles with police, and the girl that got away.

"With Meg Murray's help, the dragons her six-year-old brother saw in the vegetable garden play an important part in his struggle between life and death." --

When Bear is too sick to play, his animal friends go to his cave to make him soup and tea and keep him company.

In Wisconsin, fourth-grader Ida B spends happy hours being home-schooled and playing in her family's apple orchard, until her mother begins treatment for breast cancer and her parents must sell part of the orchard and send her to public school.

"Isabel has one rule: no dating. It's easier-it's safer-it's better-for the other person. She's got issues. She's got secrets. She's got rheumatoid arthritis. But then she meets another sick kid. He's got a chronic illness Isabel's never heard of, something she can't even pronounce. He understands what it means to be sick. He understands her more than her healthy friends. He understands her more than her own father, who's a doctor. He's gorgeous,...

"Llama Llama's mother takes good care of him when he has to stay home from school because he is sick, but when Mama Llama begins to feel sick, too, Llama Llama knows how to take care of her." --

Aza Ray Boyle's life has been defined by a unique lung disease and her evolving friendship with Jason, but just before her sixteenth birthday, she's swept up into the sky-bound world of Magonia and discovers her true identity.

Conditions worsen for the remaining young residents of a small California coastal town isolated by supernatural events when their food supplies dwindle and the Darkness underground awakens.

When Mudge gets sick unexpectedly, Henry does all he can to make him feel better.

In an effort to fulfill their dying father's last request, nine-year-old Ben and his brother and sister construct a barn on their land in the Oregon Territory.