Lizzie!

Lizzie, age eleven, does not let her wheelchair get in the way of her curiosity. After she is partially paralyzed in a diving accident, Lizzie and her single mom are starting life over in a small town in Florida, where Lizzie’s thirst for knowledge and adventure makes her some unlikely friends and gets her into some sticky situations. Resilient and precocious, Lizzie has a passion for learning new words (especially those with Latin roots) and a propensity for finding trouble, which is how she ends up stumbling upon criminal activities involving seedy characters, beautiful golden monkeys, and murder.

Honored as America's poet laureate from 1981 to 1982, MAXINE KUMIN was the recipient of the Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize as well as the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and an American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award. In addition to her seventeen poetry collections, novels, and essay collections for adults, she was the author of many children's books including Oh, Harry! (illustrated by Barry Moser) and Mites to Mastodons (illustrated by Pam Zagarenski). Seven Stories Press is re-releasing four out-of-print children’s books for kids ages 5 to 8 that Kumin co-wrote with Anne Sexton: Eggs of Things and More Eggs of Things (illustrated by Leonard Shortall) and Joey and the Birthday Present and The Wizard's Tears (illustrated by Evaline Ness). Before her death in early 2014, she and her husband lived on a farm in the Mink Hills of Warner, New Hampshire, for 40 years, where they raised horses and enjoyed the companionship of several rescued dogs.