Akron Public Library

Ten-year-old Birdie Boyer can hardly wait to start picking strawberries. But her family has just moved to the Florida backwoods, and they haven't even begun their planting. Making the new farm prosper is not easy. There is the heat to suffer through, and droughts, and cold snaps. And, perhaps most worrisome of all for the Boyers, there are rowdy neighbors, just itching to start a feud.

When ten-year-old India Opal Buloni moves to Naomi, Florida, with her preacher father, she doesn't know what to expect, least of all, that she'll adopt Winn-Dixie, a dog she names after the supermarket where they met. Opal is lonely at first, but with such an unusually friendly dog at her side, she makes some unusual friends and discovers she has a whole lot to be thankful for.

Nick and his friend Marta decide to investigate when a mysterious fire starts near a Florida wildlife preserve and an unpopular teacher goes missing.

In 1935, when her mother gets a job housekeeping for a woman who does not like children, eleven-year-old Turtle is sent to stay with relatives she has never met in far away Key West, Florida.

One month before graduating from his Central Florida high school, Quentin "Q" Jacobsen basks in the predictable boringness of his life until the beautiful and exciting Margo Roth Spiegelman, Q's neighbor and classmate, takes him on a midnight adventure and then mysteriously disappears. High school senior Quentin "Q" Jacobsen basks in the predictable boringness of his life until the beautiful and exciting Margo Roth Spiegelman, his neighbor and classmate,...

"In one morning, Rob Horton discovers a tiger in a cage and a girl who speaks her mind. It's then that he begins to understand that some things - like memories, and heartache, and tigers - can't be locked up forever" -- back cover.

"Peter and his best friend, Tommy, have a goal for their last summer before middle school: finish their Discovery Journal, a catalog of the wildlife around their Florida town. When they spot a manatee in a canal, Peter knows they've found something special--and when the manatee is injured by a boat, something to protect! As Peter joins the fight to save Florida manatees, he also finds himself taking care of his ailing grandfather and facing an unwelcome...

Beast is a fast-paced adventure of guts and survival, this time with a paranormal twist, from acclaimed author Watt Key... Adam says he can't remember where he was for the two months he went missing in a Florida swamp. That's not true. He does remember. The truth: He was driving with his parents, and the car crashed when his father swerved to avoid colliding with a giant Sasquatch-like creature standing in the highway. Haunted by his parents' disappearance...

A near-death experience, a horrible incident ar school, and a move from Connecticut to Florida have turned seventeen-year-old Peirce's life upside-down, but when she needs him most John Hayden is always there, helping but reminding her of her visit to the underworld.

Twelve-year-old Noura and her family, fleeing war in Syria, have been granted asylum in the United States, but they arrive in Florida to the chaos of the president's Muslim ban; twelve-year-old Jordyn is a member of the Christian church that is sponsoring the Alwan family, and Noura's student ambassador in middle school; their inevitable culture clash is made far worse by the wave of hate crimes unleashed by the Muslim ban, and personal problems of...