Tony Johnston

Standing tall above the tree line, Sequoia stretches his ancient arms and gathers clouds to him. He watches as days, seasons, years pass by. His branches are home to owls and choirs of frogs. Beneath his broad canopy, a world grows. This is his story.

Pa and his family pack up their belongings and undertake the difficult journey to a new life in the West.

A young boy is sustained by his family as he endures the difficulties of being a slave, but when he finally gains his freedom, his joy is tempered by the death of President Lincoln.

Retells, in tall-tale fashion, how Levi Strauss went to California during the Gold Rush, saw the need for a sturdier kind of trouser, and invented jeans.

Carlos tries to help his uncle, who is frustrated and angry at his inability to speak English, adjust to their new home in Los Angeles.

When Manuela's sheep are stolen, she has to go to Alice Nizzy Nazzy's talking road-runner-footed adobe house and try to get the witch to give the flock back, in a Southwestern version of the Baba Yaga story.

"To be reunited with his brother, twelve-year-old Manuel will have to cross the border and survive the perilous journey from Mexico to Los Angeles"--Provided by publisher.

An old black man finds a baby abandoned in a dumpster and raises him in a rough Los Angeles neighborhood to know both African American and Mexican American ways.