Akron Public Library

"In one day, four lives weave together in unexpected ways. Virgil Salinas is shy and kindhearted and feels out of place in his crazy-about-sports family. Valencia Somerset, who is deaf, is smart, brave, and secretly lonely, and she loves everything about nature. Kaori Tanaka is a self-proclaimed psychic, whose little sister, Gen, is always following her around. And Chet Bullens wishes the weird kids would just stop being so different so he can concentrate...

Fifth-grader Cally Louise Fisher stops talking, partly because her father and brother never speak of her mother who died a year earlier, but visions of her mother, friendships with a homeless man and a disabled boy, and a huge dog ensure that she still communicates.

Overlooked in class, a hearing-impaired boy who collects lost or discarded trinkets discovers a dangerous underground world full of stolen wishes and the people who collect them.

Partially deaf, seventeen-year-old Owl feels the most free hiking the forested areas around her family's New Hampshire farm, but the apperance of Cody, a magnetic young man hired to help with the sugaring off, forces Owl to make difficult decisions about their relationship and her relationship with her family.

"Liz has been assigned a class project that's perfect for her. She has to create a diorama of an animal habitat! Art plus animals? What could be better? Well, things could be better if Liz's new neighbor and classmate was a little nicer to her ... and a little less nosy!" -- Back cover.

As her senior year in high school approaches, Mina yearns to find her own path in life but working at the family business, taking care of her little sister, and dealing with her mother's impossible expectations are as stifling as the southern California heat, until she falls in love with a man who offers a way out.

It's only the second game of the season and the Stampede just lost a key player. Now only Lincoln's excellent forwarding skills can save the team from a forfeit and score a path to the championships. But will the PeeWee Soccer League let a dog play?

High school sophomore Andromeda, an outcast because she studies the occult and has a hearing impairment and other disabilities, overcomes grief over terrible losses by enlisting others' help in her plan to save library books--and finds a kindred spirit along the way.