Discusses the placement of over 200,000 orphaned or abandoned children in homes throughout the Midwest from 1854 to 1929 by recounting the story of one boy and his brothers. The history of the orphan trains combined with the story of Lee Nailling, who in 1926 rode an orphan train to Texas.

In a city ravaged by crime and corruption, 13-year-old orphan Caw's only friends are the murder of crows he has lived with since his parents flung him from their house aged only five. Caw lives in a treehouse in an abandoned city park, surviving on scraps of food and only communicating with his three crows. But a jailbreak at the prison forces him into contact with other humans -- particularly a girl called Lydia, who is attacked by the escaped prisoners...

After praying to God to fill the hole in her life left by the death of her twin sister, thirteen-year-old Merry finds an abandoned baby outside her house.

Twelve-year-old Jaden, an emotionally damaged adopted boy fascinated by electricity, feels a connection to a small, weak toddler with special needs in Kazakhstan, where Jaden's family is trying to adopt a "normal" baby. Twelve-year-old Jaden is adopted, and he knows he's an "epic fail.' That's why his family is traveling to Kazakhstan to adopt a new baby - to replace him, he's sure. And he gets it. He is incapable of stopping his stealing, hoarding,...

"Coo, a ten-year-old girl raised by a flock of pigeons, delights in finally making human contact, but quickly learns that our world is more cruel and complicated than she could have guessed"--

After twelve-year-old Annika, a foundling living in late nineteenth-century Vienna, inherits a trunk of costume jewelry, a woman claiming to be her aristocratic mother arrives and takes her to live in a strangely decrepit mansion in Germany.