Leonid Gore – illustratör

In this tense teen novel, three struggling boys in embattled West Oakland are faced with a choice sure to change their lives—for better or worse.Dante, Pook, and Wyatt are eighth graders in a rundown school in West Oakland, California, plagued by guns, gangs, drugs, and violence, all overseen by inept or indifferent teachers. The three friends are used to only being able to react to the world around them, dodging blows rather than forging their own paths. Dante, thirteen, was born to a crack-addicted mother and needs an expensive heart operation if he hopes to reach thirty. Pook is newly fourteen and, handsome and muscular, outcasted for being gay, with dreams of medical school he can’t afford. Wyatt, thirteen, is awesomely fat and cursed with being smart in a stupid place. They feel like they’re headed for a dead in until they find a suitcase full of cocaine and suddenly face an excruciating decision. Selling the coke means escape. But it also means adding to the crack epidemic that has already destroyed their community. What price are they willing to pay for freedom.

One wish for a lifetime... In the village of Bishop Mayne there is a magical Wishing Well where a person may make one wish in a lifetime. But the Well can create problems for those who use its power, for wishes often go wrong. It was just such a wish that took all the children in the town away. Only eleven-year-old Nuria, who lives with her grandfather up on the mountain, remains. Then one child returns -- Catty Winter. Catty's legs are mysteriously crippled, and Catty desperately wants Nuria to make a wish so she can walk again. Nuria swears she will make the wish for her friend. But the Well has a mind of its own. What if Nuria's wish qoes wrong?

What do a whatchful fly and a weight-bearing whale have in common? A grateful saint -- a saint whose life of work and devotion to God wouldn't have been the same without the loyalty. the friendship of a lion or a blackbird, an eagle or a deer. Other saints in these stories -- two of the liveliest are women -- deal cleverly with animals who act up: snakes in one instance, greedy geese in another. But in each of these stories, the commonality of all living things is luminously celebrated. The ten saints, whose biographies are given in the last pages, are named on the back of this jacket.