In this variation on the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas," a child explores the many ways to be kind.

"In the midst of the Syrian Civil War, Alaa takes care of Aleppo's abandoned cats"--

In California, Agnes, a giant Pacific octopus, pens a series of postcards to strangers from both above and below the pier.

Eleven-year-old Whit's zookeeper parents have rarely allowed him to go outside of the Alabama zoo they run, but he stops seeing it as such a cage when he meets "Bird Girl," for whom the place is a refuge from problems at home.

Chronicles the story of the last Africans brought illegally to the United States on the Clotilda in 1860 In 1860, long after the United States outlawed the importation of enslaved laborers, 110 men, women and children from Benin and Nigeria were captured and brought to Mobile, Alabama aboard a ship called Clotilda. Their journey includes the savage Middle Passage and being hidden in the swamplands along the Alabama River before being secretly parceled...

In these vivid poems, blueberries are "flavor-filled fireworks," cucumbers are "a fleet of green submarines in a wicker sea," lettuce tastes like "butter and pepper and salt," but sometimes "I crunch into a leaf the very same flavor as rain."