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Walker’s Crossing

Ryan Walker is a seventh grade boy who lives on a ranch in rural Wyoming. All Ryan wants is to be a cowboy for Saddlebow Ranch, where his father is the foreman. Ryan’s good-for-nothing 22-year old brother, Gil, becomes involved with the Mountain Patriots Association, a group formed to drive out all “minorities” from the area.

Ryan’s best friend, Matt, becomes a junior member of the Patriots and starts spreading racial propaganda around their junior high school. Then a friend’s father is killed in a helicopter crash caused by the Patriots, and Ryan tries to help his friend deal with the loss of his father. Ryan’s brother, Gil, is put in jail.

Ryan remains true to his friends, despite ridicule from others, and finds an inner strength he did not know he possessed. At the end of the story, he is offered that job at Saddlebow – and Ryan learns that honesty, integrity and trust win over hatred and ignorance.

Making it Happen

Three junior high boys perfect the techniques of making a Happening, but only two of them ever understand why.

The Solomon System

Thirteen-year-old Ted and his older brother, Nory, have always been a team until the summer family problems make them reevaluate their relationship and their expectations of each other.

An Amish Family

This nonfiction book, that reads as though fiction, follows the various members of an Amish family through their daily routines, passed down to them by custom. The reader will celebrate with them the accomplishment of a barn-raising, the happiness of an Amish wedding, the tragedy of death, devoutness of faith, and the pathos of shunning, among other parts of their lives. Beautiful illustrations by George Armstrong.

Change in the Wind

True-to-life short stories showing how teenagers deal with everyday questions and problems: school, friends, love, sex, parents, brothers and sisters. They experience the painful challenges–and the excitement and fun–of the teen years.

Grasshoppers in the Soup

Phyllis got her start by writing stories and humorous essays for church magazines for both children and teenagers. This is a collection of some of those short stories written in a lighter vein.

Knee-Deep in Ice Cream

A second collection of the short humorous essays that were originally published as a column called “First Person Singular,” for teens, under the pseudonym P. R. Tedesco, in church magazines.

Never Born a Hero

Fifteen short stories about teens who, in some small way, make a difference in their world.

The characters in this book do just that: a boy who tries to understand his uptight father, a girl who empathizes with her disgraced sister, a group of young people who take the time to help a displaced family. Readers may recognize themselves in these stories and learn to like themselves better because of it.

The Private I

For 25 years, Phyllis Naylor wrote a humor column called “First Person Singular” under the pseudonym P.R. Tedesco, a teenage boy. It appeared in church magazines and story papers for teens for a number of churches of various denominations. This book contains a special selection of these columns, describing the teenager’s thoughts on family living, school, community and church.

To Shake a Shadow

A middle-school boy who seems to have everything going for him–his dad a bank vice-president, his mom a lovely woman moving in the right social circles, and Brad himself well on the way to being elected president of his class, is devastated when the ugly story about his dad hits the newspapers, and his world crumples. How do you get your own life back on track when there’s always this shadow you can’t seem to shake?