Ted Hammond, the only sixth grader in his small Nebraska town's one-room schoolhouse, searches for clues to the disappearance of a homeless family.

"Homelessness pervades America's cities and rural areas. Multiple factors force people into a life on the street, including job loss, mental illness, and drug addiction. Homelessness can happen to anyone, regardless of age, gender, marital status, and race. While it's important for societies to provide shelter, food, and support for homeless people, it's even more necessary to prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place. Struggling readers...

In Chennai, India, after spending his whole life in jail with his mother, who is serving time for a crime she did not commit, nine-year-old Kabir is suddenly released and has to figure out how to survive on his own in the outside world.

"Ashford, Vermont, might look like your typical sleepy New England college town, but to the shadowy residents who live among the remains of its abandoned mills and factories, it's known as "Burntown." Eva Sandeski, known as "Necco" on the street, has been a part of this underworld for years, ever since the night her father Miles drowned in a flood that left her and her mother Lily homeless. A respected professor, Miles was also an inventor of fantastic...

Left alone in Hodeldorf, the coldest city anywhere, Otto joins forces with Nim and other tattercoats, street children who steal to survive, to face evil forces and save the day.