Illinois Authors

After a bird flies into their window, two children and their mother study how to keep birds safe, and soon their whole neighborhood is helping in different ways.

Riverhead Books, New York : 2005.

When Field Mouse and Squirrel find a big, round, orange object in the road their friends disagree about what it is, but soon it becomes the life of the party.

Regina must find a solution when she learns her best friend has peanut allergy and cannot eat Regina's fabulous planned birthday cake. Includes note from a pediatric allergist.

Riverhead Books, New York : 2011.

For anyone who has ever wanted to step into the world of a favorite book, here is a pioneer pilgrimage, a tribute to Laura Ingalls Wilder, and a hilarious account of butter-churning obsession. Wendy McClure is on a quest to find the world of beloved Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilder -- a fantastic realm of fiction, history, and places McClure has never been to yet somehow knows by heart. She traces the pioneer journey of the Ingalls family -- looking for the Big Woods among the medium trees in Wisconsin, wading in Plum Creek, and enduring a prairie hailstorm in South Dakota. She immerses herself in all things Little House -- exploring the story from fact to fiction, and from the TV shows to the annual summer pageants in Laura's hometowns. Whether she's churning butter in her apartment or sitting in a replica log cabin, McClure is always in pursuit of "the Laura experience." Along the way she comes to understand how Wilder's life and work have shaped our ideas about girlhood and the American West. The Wilder Life is a loving, irreverent, spirited tribute to a series of books that have inspired generations of American women. It is also an incredibly funny first-person account of obsessive reading, and a story about what happens when we reconnect with our childhood touchstones -- and find that our old love has only deepened. - Jacket flap.

To escape rumored terrors in Kansas, New Yorkers Jack and Frances, eleven, and Frances's brother Harold, seven, jump off an orphan train in 1899 and help new friend Alexander to build Wanderville, a safe place for homeless children.

"The orphans of Wanderville have decided never again to let themselves be misled by adults offering them shiny red apples and warm beds. They're going to make their way to California and establish a more permanent spot for Wanderville, one where the Society for Children's Aid and Relief (otherwise known as S-C-A-R) will never find them. But when the orphans are suddenly left without transportation, they must locate a new means of getting to their "town." Enter a dandy motorist with a proposition: If the orphans agree to take a mysterious gold medallion to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair on his behalf, they will receive a handsome reward that will allow them to book passage west. With a particularly relentless S-C-A-R agent on their tail and little hope of discovering other travel money, the citizens of Wanderville conclude that the motorist's offer is their best bet. What they don't realize, however, is just how treacherous the journey to the fair will be and how much they will need to sacrifice on the way to their new home."--Jacket flap.

When the town sheriff discovers the exact location of 'Wanderville, ' the orphans who live there--Jack, Frances, Harold, Alexander, and their new friends--must flee their home in the woods--