Author

Elvira Woodruff

Elvira Woodruff
  • Dominic Cantori is an orphan. Ashamed of his situation, he avoids making friends for fear of exposing his terrible secret. One day on a class trip to Ellis Island, a tour guide asks everyone about their families. Terrified of having to answer, Dominic immediately flees from the class and hides in a closet, where he falls asleep for hours.

    When he wakes up, the museum is deserted. Lonely and afraid, he picks up one display telephone after another, listening to the recorded voices of immigrants who describe their lives in faraway countries and their journeys to Ellis Island. To Dominic's surprise, the voice of an old Italian immigrant speaks directly to him! Before he knows it, he's transported back in time—to Italy in 1908. There, he unlocks the door to his past and discovers just what it feels like to be loved by his own family.

  • Has a mummy's spirit really moved into Andy's body?!

    What do you do when it seems like everyone in your family has done something magnificent—everyone, that is, except you? That's Andy's problem. He just wants to do something special.

    When his class visits an Egyptian exhibit, he figures it'll be just another field trip. But he's wrong, because somehow a mummy's spirit seems to have given him a weird magic power. Suddenly, Andy's magnificent—all he has to do is wish for whatever he wants! But being extraordinary has its drawbacks. And Andy soon learns to be very, very careful of what he wishes for.

  • In London in 1735, eleven-year-old Forrest Harper is living with his family in the Tower of London. There he helps his father tend the ravens and guard the prisoners. Still, life is lonely.

    When vicious Scottish Rebels are captured, Forrest is delighted. Perhaps now he can prove his courage and impress the local bullies who torment him. His happiness is short-lived, though, when the Harpers are only given custody of Maddy, a Scottish Rebel’s daughter, for a rebel in a dress will surely make Forrest a laughingstock.

    As the days pass, Maddy’s beauty and warmth and her touching stories of life in Scotland seal a friendship between them. But when she is slated for execution, Forrest is faced with a horrifying choice: commit treason and help her escape or obey the law and allow his innocent friend to be executed.

  • Lucy Wolcott and her younger sister Glory are two young orphans who have no one in the world but each other.

    Every day, they labor from dawn to dusk in the bleak, cold shelter of a public workhouse in old London Town, where there is little to eat and the nights are cold and damp. The only light in their lives comes from the stories that Lucy invents about a family she barely remembers and a doll named Morning Glory whom Lucy promises is destined to return to them someday.

    When Lucy finds an old, discarded doll, Glory is certain that it’s the long-lost Morning Glory. But Morning Glory is no ordinary doll, and how she leads the girls to the most surprising turns of fortune makes for a heartwarming story that brims with love, hope, and the truest spirit of Christmas.