Ronald Koertge

Fifteen-year-old Gabriel is continually embarrassed by his teacher/writer father, but when he goes to live with him in Los Angeles in an apartment complex full of unusual characters, Gabriel gains new insights into himself and his father.

Sixteen-year-old Ted, orphaned when his parents are killed in a car crash, identifies more with animals than people--especially strays whose situation Ted equates with his own, but as he starts to settle in to his new foster home and school, he forms bonds with his two foster brothers and gradually comes back in touch with the human race.

While visiting an injured classmate in the hospital, sixteen year old Ryan, who is trying to come to terms with his sister's death from cancer, meets a young patient who claims to be able to see into the world where the dead live.

Three troubled high school seniors, who plan to run away together from Illinois to California after graduation, try to figure out who they are who they want to be.

Worried that his mother will send his beloved grandfather to a nursing home "for his own good," Jesse and some of his eighth-grade classmates accompany Pappy into the mountains near their small California town to look for the tiger tracks he claims to have seen.

Presents nine drawings by a single illustrator, each of which has been translated into a story by two different authors writing about what they imagine is going on in the picture.