Nina Bawden

Albert, Carrie and young Nick are war-time evacuees whose lives get so tangled up with the people they've come to live among that the war and their real families seem to belong to another world. Carrie and Nick are billeted in Wales with old Mr Evans, who is so mean and cold, and his timid mouse of a sister, Lou, who suddenly starts having secrets. Their friend Albert is luckier, living in Druid's Bottom with warm-hearted Hepzibah Green and the strange Mister Johnny, who can talk to animals but not to human beings. Carrie and Nick visit him there whenever they can for Hepzibah makes life exciting and enticing with her stories and delicious cooking. Gradually they begin to feel more at ease in their war-time home, but then, in trying to heal the rift between Mr Evans and his estranged sister, and save Druid's Bottom, Carrie does a terrible thing which is to haunt her for years to come. Carrie revisits Wales as an adult and tells the story to her own children.

It is the year 2035, and kids are the only ones who matter. In Tom's world, every family has only one child. "Brother" and "sister" are insults. And the Oldies, like Gandy--Tom's grandfather--are taken away to Memory Theme Parks. On the way to the Theme Park, Gandy escapes into the Wild Wood, the dangerous world outside their walled city. Tom has no choice but to follow. The wilderness is like nowhere he's ever been before, and the more he learns at Gandy's side, the more he wonders: Is the wall meant to keep the Outsiders out, as he's been taught in school--or the Insiders in?

Thirteen-year-old Jane, whose quiet life with her two aunts is interrupted by sporadic visits from her seafaring father, tries to learn more about her half brother and sister after discovering that her father remarried ten years ago.

summary

Evacuated to the English countryside during World War II, a fatherless family tries to raise a baby squirrel that also lost its home.

When an unexpected inheritance threatens to change his life with his adopted family in London, an eleven-year-old foundling runs away from home.

An adopted daughter who sometimes feels she doesn't fit into her large untidy English family, reevaluates her position after a visit with her real father, an African prince.