A friendless girl, teased mercilessly at school because her uncle manages the town dump, finds a friend in Mrs. Fish, the school custodian, and gradually life becomes more bearable.

Eccentric Mrs. Fish, the school custodian, teaches Joyce, an 11-year-old misfit, to cherish what makes her unique. Fish, Ape, and Me, the Dump Queen".

Content with the dump where she lives with her uncle, a place where trash is treated with great dignity, Joyce considers the outside world cruel and hateful until she meets Mrs. Fish.

This resource provides teachers, librarians, parents, and others who work with children ages 9 - 12 with an annotated bibliography of children's books that contain characters who display positive family oriented values in their relationships with others. Sample activities and lessons related to the books in the bibliography will help children in responding to the thoughts and feelings of selected characters as they strive to understand their own thoughts and actions about family oriented values. Educators and parents can initiate the activities as presented or use them as a starting point for their own lessons. Parents and educators, including homeschooling parents and instructors in religious settings, will benefit from this helpful resource.

Suggests exhibits, displays, bulletin board games, reference skill games, and other library activities designed to get children interested in reading

Here are sixteen representative stories for the eighties, written especially for this collection by today's best-known writers for teenagers. Their impressions radiate through an emotional prism of hope and hate, love and death, despair and joy, in a diverse yet strikingly unified collection.

No More "Us" and "Them" delineates what steps educators can take to create an atmosphere where adolescent students feel accepted, included, and valuable to themselves and to their peers. This book provides ideas for lessons and activities that can be integrated into existing c...

Using quality children's literature that presents families positively and promotes appreciation of family diversity, this book offers you a unique way to help students understand the common complexities of today's families. Books are grouped into four major categories-diverse family groups, family heritage and tradition, relationships within families, and family conflicts. Within these areas books are chosen for specific topics, ranging from Death in the Family to Homelessness. For each title there are questions for reflection and discussion and a target activity that reinforces the concepts presented in the book.