Alice Mead's novels for young adults and middle graders often feature young people coping with dire circumstances who with ingenuity, determination, and the aid of helpful adults make positive, if small, changes in their own lives and the lives of those around them. Mead does not shrink from difficult subjects. She has written about the war in Kosovo, famine and civil war in the Sudan, and the perils of reaching manhood in an inner-city housing project. Mead once commented: "I have always been interested in writing about children who--for some reason--live on the edge of the mainstream society. I feel that authors and artists should travel to these edges, to widen the circle of inclusion through empathy and art."

What Mead's heroes and heroines share is a resiliency of spirit and an ability to find humanity in themselves and others. Junebug, an African-American boy growing up in New...