Thirteen-year-old Jeff's life spirals downward into homelessness after his alcoholic mother loses her job.

As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

Orphaned and homeless, fourteen-year-old twins Vick and Tara, who is autistic, go up against a crime lord and her four-legged robotic army, with help from their robotic dog, Daisy.

Piper's life is turned upside down when her family moves into a shelter in a whole new city. She misses her house, her friends, and her privacy--and she hates being labeled the homeless girl at her new school. But while Hope House offers her new challenges, it also brings new friendships, like the girls in Firefly Girls Troop 423 and a sweet street dog named Baby. So when Baby's person goes missing, Piper knows she has to help. But helping means finding...

After T.J. and his younger brother are adopted, the biggest problems they face are winning an international baseball tournament, held in their New Jersey hometown, and helping a homeless teammate.

Although seventeen-year-old Amber Appleton is homeless, living in a school bus with her unfit mother, she is a relentless optimist who visits the elderly at a nursing home, teaches English to Korean Catholic women with the use of rhythm and blues music, and befriends a solitary Vietnam veteran and his dog, but eventually she experiences one burden more than she can bear and slips into a deep depression.