Discovering the symbolic meanings of flowers while languishing in the foster-care system, 18-year-old Victoria is hired by a florist when her talent for helping others is discovered, a situation that leads to a romantic prospect and the confrontation of a painful secret from her past.

"Eleven-year-old Perry was born and raised by his mom at the Blue River Co-ed Correctional Facility in tiny Surprise, Nebraska. His mom is a resident on Cell Block C, and so far Warden Daugherty has made it possible for them to be together. That is, until a new district attorney discovers the truth--and Perry is removed from the facility and forced into a foster home. When Perry moves to the "outside" world, he feels trapped. Desperate to be reunited...

An eleven-year-old foster child tries to cope with her longings and fears as she schemes against everyone who tries to be friendly.

Separated from his grandfather and placed in a foster home, Prez forges a friendship with an alien who appears as a dog to everyone else and entreats Prez to help compile a list of Earth's redeeming qualities.

Rick, a fourteen-year-old foster child, escapes from a juvenile detention facility near Las Vegas and travels to Canyonlands National Park in Utah where he meets a bird biologist working on a project to reintroduce condors to the wild.

Catch : King Solomon's baby ; Eye of the beholder ; Timing is anything ; Drugs in the system ; Catch as catch can. -- Hold : Surge control ; Chutes and ladders and chutes ; Arrested in development ; Taking agency ; Homespun. -- Release : Fantasy islands ; There's something about Mary ; Experiment ; Touching the elephant ; Last call. This work is a look at the foster care system that examines why it is failing the kids it is supposed to protect...

Newbery Honor Book: 2003. A troublesome twelve-year-old orphan, staying with an elderly artist who needs her, remembers the only other time she was happy in a foster home, with a family that truly seemed to care about her.

In 1856, having traveled with his young sister from New York to a foster home on a farm in Missouri, ten-year-old Danny plots to get his foster father to send for and marry his mother.

Sent to another foster home when her father returns to rehab, Jane discovers that family is more than just relatives and that home can be found in unlikely places.

Eleven-year-old Michael Patrick Kelly from New York City is sent to a foster home, a Missouri farm with a sadistic owner, a bullying son, and a number of secrets, one of which may be murder.