"Sometimes life is so hard and then, bingo, it's like happiness is pushing at your back, waiting to come out of your front ..." On the hot Texas army base she calls home, Katie spends the lazy days of her summer waiting: waiting to grow up; waiting for Dickie Mack to fall in love with her; waiting for her breasts to blossom; waiting for the beatings to stop. Since their mother died, Katie and her older sister, Diane, have been struggling to understand...

Follows the emotions of a young boy as he waits at an airport for a family member to return home from serving in the military.

"There's no place like (a haunted) home. Willow has never had a place she can call home. With two parents in the military and a nomadic childhood, finding a place to make her own has become a total pipe dream. And when the family arrives at their latest stop -- the historic Hadleigh House -- Willow encounters something that doesn't help her chances of staying put ... GHOSTS! Hadleigh House's spectral occupants have been scaring off would-be residents...

After something strange happens during a camping trip, twelve-year-old alien-obsessed Simon suspects he has been abducted, but was it real or just his overactive imagination?

Suzy spends her year in first grade waiting for her father, who is serving in Vietnam, and when the postcards stop coming she worries that he will never make it home.

The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have impacted the children of soldiers--men and women who have been called away from their families to fight in a faraway war. In their own words, some of these children describe how their experience has marked and shaped their lives.

"When someone is serving our country, far from home, everyone in their family has to be brave. Including -- and sometimes especially -- the kids. This book speaks to all kids in this situation in telling the story of a boy and a girl with parents away on duty. It captures the children's worries, fears, trials, and triumphs while waiting for their parents to return from service. Although the narrative tells one universal tale, the photographs depict...