Thunder from the sea

Thunder from the sea by Joan Hiatt Harlow is a bout a 13-year old orphan named Tom Cambell. When Enoch and Fiona Murray take him in to live with them on an island called Back o' the Moon in Newfoundland, Tom is happy as can be. One day, while fishing druing a storm, Tom rescues a newfoundland dog and names him Thunder. Then Fiona gets pregnant, and an earthquake comes. But the earthquake isn't the least of it, it causes the water to go out of the harbor, then come back in in a rush as a tidal wave. Tom's house is left standing, but alot of their neighbor's houses are swept away. Tom is worried that Fiona and Enoch won't be able to keep him, with a new baby on the way, and money stretched tight. Then something goes wrong with Fiona's baby when it's about to born, and Tom must help get Fiona across the melting harbor to the doctor in a snowstorm. But in the end, everything works out, and Tom is officially adopted by Enoch and Fiona, plus he has a new baby sister!

Homeless Bird

Homeless Bird by Gloria Whelan is about a young girl in India named Koly. Her family is struglling, and she is married off to a sickly young boy, whose parents had lied about his age and illness. Soon after the marriage, Kloy accompanies her new husband and in-laws on a train journey to the Ganges River, which could supposedly heal the sick. Instead of getting better, Koly's husband gets sicker and dies. She tries to be the best daughter she can be to her her in-laws, but the mother hates her anyway. Then her only friend, her sister-in-law gets married, and she is left all alone in the world. Then her father-in-law dies, and things get even tougher for Koly. One day, her mother-in-law, or sass gets a letter. she says it's from her brother, telling her she can come live with him. But in the holy city of Vrindavan, her mother-in-law manages to abandon her. But soon she finds love, and independent life she had never known.