Cañon City Public Library

With love and determination befitting the "world's greatest family," twelve-year-old Deza Malone, her older brother Jimmie, and their parents endure tough times in Gary, Indiana, and later Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression.

Cole and Claudia are poor and homeless on Christmas Eve. Cole's kindness toward another hungry child draws attention from Santa Claus, who gifts the siblings with a very special gingerbread house.

Delly Porter enjoys the feel of soft dirt beneath her feet as she walks to and from school, but after a classmate makes her feel ashamed of having no shoes she learns that her parents and others, too, see value in things that do not cost money.

Angry and humiliated when his sharecropper father is jailed for stealing food for his family, a young black boy grows in courage and understanding by learning to read and with the help of the devoted dog Sounder

Living with his alcoholic father on a broken-down sailboat on Puget Sound has been hard on seventeen-year-old Chance Taylor, but when his love of running leads to a high-paying job, he quickly learns that the money is not worth the risk.

Rachel Price has just one happy memory from her childhood: the moment her father took her hands while playing outside on a cold, snowy day and called her his angel. Rachelś daughter is the only light in what has become a dark life. But then, an unexpected phone call from an old friend changes everything.

Fourteen-year-olds Raphael and Gardo team up with a younger boy, Rat, to figure out the mysteries surrounding a bag Raphael finds during their daily life of sorting through trash in a third-world country's dump.

A fictionalized autobiography of Marie Van Goethem, the impoverished student from the Paris Opera ballet school who became the model for Edgar Degas's famous sculpture, "The Little Dancer."

With her mama recently dead and her pa sight unseen since birth, fourteen-year-old Amelia is suddenly in charge of her younger brother and sister--and of the family gas station. Harley Blevins, local king and emperor of Standard Oil, is in hot pursuit to clinch his fuel monopoly. To keep him at bay and keep her family out of foster care, Melia must come up with a father--and fast. And so when a hobo rolls out of a passing truck, Melia grabs opportunity...

During the coldest season, when the world feels scary -- what do you remember about being warm? Baked potatoes. Trust. A kettle on the stove. Blankets. A smile. And, most of all, the reassurance that you belong. In his powerful and moving poem, featuring illustrations from thirteen extraordinary artists, bestselling author and UNHCR Goodwill Ambassador Neil Gaiman draws together many different memories to answer the question, 'what do you need to...