Once upon a time, two couples with Jamaican, Mohawk, Indian, and Scottish ethnic roots won the lottery and bought a big house where all of them, four adults and seven adopted and biological children, could live together in harmony--but change is inevitable, especially when a disagreeable grandfather comes to stay.

Thirteen-year-old Jamie must spend her summer volunteering at Foxfield Public Library, but quickly grows to love the people there and enthusiastically joins the fight to save the library.--

Pictures and text survey the various patterns and relationships that may constitute families, emphasizing the ties between parents and children.

"When a radical band of teen activists claim that Alix's powerful father covers up wrongdoing by corporations that knowingly allow innocent victims to die in order to make enormous profits from unsafe products, she must decide if she will blow the whistle on his misdeeds"--

Percy the pug searches far and wide for the perfect puddle but when he finds it, Mama pig is unhappy about him joining her family until a storm provides Percy the opportunity to prove himself to her.

Nine-year-old Sumac Lottery considers it her job to make sure none of the Lottery celebrations are forgotten, especially now at Christmas time, and in her large, gay, and multiethnic family there are a lot of occasions for celebration in the house they all call Camelottery--but when a terrible ice storm hits Toronto, one of her dads, and her favorite brother cannot make it home from India, and it becomes increasingly difficult to hang on to the holiday...

Alastair the African grey parrot is adopted by elderly dance-enthusiast and pie-baker Albertina Plopky and his sister, Aggie, by twelve-year-old Fritz, spoiling his plans to fly away with Aggie. Told in Alastair, Albertina, and Fritz's voices.

Prior to 1990, fewer than five percent of domestic infant adoptions were open. In 2012, ninety percent or more of adoption agencies are recommending open adoption. Yet these agencies do not often or adequately prepare either adopting parents or birth parents for the road ahead of them! The adult parties in open adoptions are left floundering. There are many resources on why to do open adoption, but what about how? Open adoption isn't just something...

"Bruce and the residents of Soggy Hollow tell a spooky story to get into the Halloween spirit"--

While vacationing in Africa, the Lazardo family finds and brings back to America a friendly dinosaur that becomes the talk of the town.