M. E Kerr

A teenage boy falls in love with an "upper-class" girl and gets to know his estranged grandfather in one heartbreaking summer which climaxes in a shattering search for Nazi war criminals.

These 15 short stories by a writer the New York Times Book Review has called “one of the grand masters of young adult fiction” capture our fears, yearnings, loneliness, self-doubts, and universal need for love and acceptance
M. E. Kerr’s pioneering young adult literature has gained a devoted following for fearlessly breaking rules and confronting conformity. In Edge, her trademark gifts of pulling apart...

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder in this unusual love story
Little Little La Belle isn't redundant. She's a dwarf—a beautiful blond heiress who lives a pampered existence in the New York town named after her family. With her eighteenth birthday approaching, her parents want to marry Little Little off to the perfect man.
Enter Sydney Cinnamon. Orphaned young, he went on to become one of America's most famous dwarfs. The...

World War II comes to a small Pennsylvania town in this thought-provoking novel about a peace-loving Quaker family
War may be raging in Europe, but in Sweet Creek, Pennsylvania, peace is being waged. Bud Shoemaker is vehemently opposed to the war when he registers for the draft as a conscientious objector. No one except his Quaker family shares Bud's pacifist views—although his thirteen-year-old brother, Jubal, wonders what kind...

A teenager whose parents have separated tries to adapt to life at a boarding school and make a fresh start in a strange new place
After her mother runs off with her much-younger boyfriend, fourteen-year-old Flanders is shipped off to a boarding school in Virginia. On the train, she meets Carolyn Cardmaker, a preacher’s daughter who will become her best friend. She also meets Ernestine Blue.
Miss Blue is Flanders’s faculty...

The animals at Critters animal shelter look forward to Christmas as well as the ever-present possiblility of adoption.

The daughter of faith-healing Christians and the son of a TV evangelist are the stars of this lively cautionary tale about religion, family, faith, and love I start my story with the day I first saw Jesse Pegler. That was when my whole life first started changing. Sixteen-year-old Opal Ringer is the daughter of Royal Ringer, the Pentecostal leader of a motley flock of down-on-their-luck believers. Jesse Pegler is the son of Brother Pegler. An "evangelist...

A Long Island teenager reunites with her older sister in a novel about family, sibling rivalry, and the love you didn't know you were missing Fifteen-year-old Suzy Slade's parents are divorced. Now Suzy lives with her mother in a beautiful house on the ocean in Seaville, Long Island. Her gorgeous older sister, Chicago, lives with their father in New York City. At least, she did. Chicago just roared into town on her brand-new Harley. With her sister's...

A cockroach wakes up one morning and discovers that he has turned into a boy Shoebag likes his life as a cockroach. Like the others in his "tribe," he was named for the place of his birth-in his case, a white summer sandal. He enjoys living in a Boston apartment building with his parents, Drainboard and Under The Toaster, although they've lost countless relatives to jumping spiders, water bugs, beetles, and the deadly fumes of the dreaded exterminator....

In the hilarious sequel to Shoebag, the cockroach uses his magical abilities to help a lonely boy at an all-girls' school Shoebag and his roach family have taken up residence in the Lower School at Miss Rattray's School for Girls in Wayne, Pennsylvania. Shoebag and his parents, Drainboard and Under The Toaster, like their new home because it's close to the kitchen. But lately, Shoebag has been dreaming about the time he was transformed into a person...