How do you make a banana split? The answer? Step on it. That is one of the jokes ten-year-old Bobby Benson and his dad, fighting in Germany in this last year of WWII, send in their letters.
"Wishing You Home" begins with the news that Bobby's best friend's dad has been killed in the war. Bobby's fear for his own dad's safety increases.

Dust storms, rabbit drives, hobo camps, and riding on freight trains were all a part of life for many throughout the Midwest during the Great Depression. Polio and many other diseases had not yet been conquered and the huge dust storms that killed livestock and ruined crops also caused life-threatening respiratory ailments, such as asthma and pneumonia. In the spring of 1935, thirteen-year-old Brady Foster's family is forced to leave their "dusted out" wheat farm in southwest Kansas when his mother's asthma takes a turn for the worst. Deciding her only hope lies in California's cleaner air, Brady and his little autistic sister are sent to live with their grandfather, a county sheriff in the northcentral part of the state, until their parents can return. In his new school, Brady is bullied and ostracized, but he finds a friend in Eddie Peel, the son of the town drunk, a boy with a pet crow. Selected for the Kansas State Reading Circle Catalog and Winner of the J. Donald Coffin Memorial Book Award

"Maggie Rose and Sass" explores the differences between two races and the culture of the times. The novel is set in 1888 in a fictional town based on Nicodemus, Kansas, a town settled eleven years earlier by ex-slaves from Kentucky.
Life in Georgia with an ugly-tempered, racist grandmother has not prepared the orphaned Maggie Rose for Solomon Town whose citizens are almost all black. Sass has lived all her life in Solomon Town, the daughter of an ex-slave mother and a free-born, educated, mixed-race father. Raised in such totally different cultures, the two girls are bound to clash.
""Insightfully written...historically moving"" -Angela Bates, Nicodemus Descendant, Historian, and Author (Recipient of the 2005 Ralph Waldo Emerson Jones, Jr. Lifetime Achievement Award)
""A memorable addition to Kansas young adult fiction. Solidly based on historical fact, yet illustrates some perpetual truths. It is a celebration of both the pioneer spirit and of diversity. Readers will not soon forget this book."" -Roy Bird, former Director of the Kansas Center for the Book, Author of "Little Ike: Dwight D. Eisenhower's Abilene Boyhood" and "Hark I Hear a Meadowlark "

Echoes of Kansas Past: More Than Just History in the Making Grandpa Andrews says to know how another person feels, you have to walk a mile in his moccasins, Jack said. And the time machine will let people do that, Mollie said. ***** Travel back in time with fourth grade twins, Jack and Mollie, in this illustrated chapter book and meet those who are now part of Kansas history. Go with the twins as they travel through time and find themselves walking in the moccasins of others. Among their experiences: living as Kanza Indians in 1620, riding an orphan train where new parents await the children, hiding with other scared runaway slaves in a dark cellar and meeting Abraham Lincoln, witnessing discrimination as first grade classmates of Langston Hughes in a non-integrated school, arriving at Fort Riley where they meet Comanche, the famous horse of the Battle of the Little Big Horn, again becoming Indian children in the harsh early days of the Haskell University, and attending a dance where they hear the first ever rendition of the state song, Home on the Range.