A year they'll never forget

Ten-year-old Frederika (Fred for short) doesn't have much faith that the new teacher in town will last very long. After all, they never do. Most teachers who come to their one-room schoolhouse in remote, Alaska leave at the first smell of fish, claiming that life there is just too hard.

But Miss Agnes is different -- she doesn't get frustrated with her students, and she throws away old textbooks and reads Robin Hood instead! For the first time, Fred and her classmates begin to enjoy their lessons and learn to read and write -- but will Miss Agnes be like all the rest and leave as quickly as she came?...

Two orphaned siblings struggle to survive a harsh Alaskan winter looking after a badly wounded miner, while their guardian, an old Athabascan Indian who has taught them the ways of their ancestors, searches for help....

It's 1948 and ten-year-old Fred has just watched her teacher leave -- another in a long line of teachers who have left the village because the smell of fish was too strong, the way of life too hard. Will another teacher come to the small Athabascan village on the Koyukuk River to teach Fred and her friends in the one-room schoolhouse? Will she stay, or will she hate the smell of fish, too?

Fred doesn't know what to make of Miss Agnes Sutterfield. She sure is a strange one. No other teacher throws away old textbooks and reads Greek myths and Robin Hood. No other teacher plays opera recordings, talks about "hairy os," and Athabascan kids becoming doctors or scientists. No other teacher ever said Fred's deaf older sister should come to school, too. And no other teacher ever, ever told the kids they were each good at something. Maybe it's because Miss Agnes can't smell anything, let alone fish, that things seem to be all right. But then Miss Agnes says she's homesick and will go back to England at the end of the year. Fred knows what this is about: Just when things seem to be good, things go back to being the same.

How Fred and her friends grow with Miss Agnes is the heart of this story, told with much humor and warmth by Fred herself This is a story about Alaska, about the old ways and the new, about pride. And it's a story about a great teacher who opens a door to the world -- where, once you go through, nothing is ever the same again....

Deet's world turns upside down when his father is arrested for drug use. It doesn't seem possible that kind, caring Dad could be a criminal! After all, he only took the pills to stay awake so he could work two jobs. Now what will happen? How will Deet be able to face his classmates? Where will they get money? And most importantly, will Dad be okay in prison?

Hurt, angry, and ashamed, Deet doesn't want to visit his father in jail. But when Mom goes back to work, Deet starts visiting Dad after school. It's frightening at first, but as he adjusts to the routine, Deet begins to see the prisoners as people with stories of their own, just like his dad. Deet soon realizes that prison isn't the terrifying place of movies and nightmares. In fact, Dad's imprisonment leads Deet to make a few surprising discoveries -- about his father, his friends, and himself.

With moving realism, Kirkpatrick Hill brings to light the tumultuous experience of having a parent in jail in this honest and stirring story of a young man forced to grow up quickly....