Born around the turn of the century, Opal Whiteley spent her childhood on the American Western frontier. Through these excerpts from her diary, readers are given a taste of the struggle and despair as well as the faith and joy felt in each moment of her life. An IRA Teacher's Choice Book. 6/97.

Opal Plumstead might be plain, but she has always been fiercely intelligent. Yet her scholarship and dreams of university are snatched away when her father is sent to prison, and fourteen-year-old Opal must start work at the Fairy Glen sweet factory to support her family. Opal struggles to get along with the other workers, who think her snobby and stuck-up. But Opal idolises Mrs Roberts, the factory’s beautiful, dignified owner, who introduces Opal to the legendary Mrs Pankhurst and her fellow Suffragettes. And when Opal meets Morgan - Mrs Roberts’ handsome son, and the heir to Fairy Glen – she believes she has found her soulmate. But the First World War is about to begin, and will change Opal's life for ever. The brilliantly gripping wartime story from the bestselling, award-winning Jacqueline Wilson.

A classic tale by Newbery Medalist Kate DiCamillo, America's beloved storyteller. One summer’s day, ten-year-old India Opal Buloni goes down to the local supermarket for some groceries – and comes home with a dog. But Winn-Dixie is no ordinary dog. It’s because of Winn-Dixie that Opal begins to make friends. And it’s because of Winn-Dixie that she finally dares to ask her father about her mother, who left when Opal was three. In fact, as Opal admits, just about everything that happens that summer is because of Winn-Dixie. Featuring a new cover illustration by E. B. Lewis.

Fifth-grader Mabel (code name Sunflower) has her parents Rules for a Successful Life as an Undercover Secret Agent to live by and when her parents leave town abruptly she is not too worried--but when her beloved Aunt Gertie is arrested, and her objectionable Uncle Frank and Aunt Stella (Frankenstella) and her annoying (but clever) cousin Victoria take over her house and the family's private museum, Mabel begins to smell a rat and she is determined to find out what her suspicious relatives are up to.

Self-published book of poems by a young author whose childhood diary had caused a sensation three years earlier upon its publication in the Atlantic Monthly magazine in spring 1920, and subsequently as a book. Whiteley's childhood record of growing up in the woods in a logging town in Oregon was painstakingly pieced back together from its torn fragments and is still controversial as to its true origins. Shortly after publication, it was claimed that she wrote the diary as an adult, not a child, and it was branded a hoax. She died in a mental hospital in London in 1992 where she had been institutionalized since 1948.

In the 1970's, the Burlesque industry was thriving. Nudity and pornography was a public and political outrage. And people across the country were flocking to burlesque theaters to see Melissa St. John: The Upside Down Girl, A.K.A. Wild Star. Little did they know she was a single Mother, alone, on the road, with her two children in boarding schools in separate states. Over a 6 year period while traveling on a burlesque circuit across the country, she was searching for a way to come face to face with her true spirit. Through writing her innermost thoughts on paper, she found herself in the most unconventional way. THOUGHTS OF A STRIPPER: A MOTHER'S STORY, by Opal Dockery, is an inspirational, spiritual and autobiographical journal of a stripper's thoughts over a 6 year period in the 1970's. Her personal thoughts on single parenthood, spirituality, alternative lifestyle thinking, travel, the burlesque industry and family will inspire you, shock you and uplift you.