Valerie Hobbs

After a fire destroys the farm where he was born, a young border collie acquires a series of owners and learns about life as he seeks a home and longs to fulfill his life's purpose of shepherding sheep. Sheep everywhere! The truck stopped, and they closed in all around us like a big gray woolly blanket, bawling and baaing, stinking like, well, like sheep. They were bigger than I was, every last one, and so many I couldn't count them, more sheep than...

After a fire destroys the farm where he was born, a young border collie acquires a series of owners and learns about life as he seeks a home and longs to fulfill his life's purpose of shepherding sheep. Finally, he arrives at the Good Shepherd Home for Boys, where he finds a friend in Luke, who is also alone in the world and looking for a home.

When quiet sixth-grader Minnie gets a new language arts teacher who makes her think and ask hard questions, she is inspired to stand up for what she believes in.

After her beloved Gran dies, fifteen-year-old Liv goes to California to live with the father she has never known and must adjust to his gruff ways and his life as an abalone diver, so different from her life in New York City.

While vacationing in the country, eleven-year-old Toby, a cancer patient, learns some important lessons about living and dying from an elderly poet and her cow.