Mary McDonald-Lewis

A thief makes a disturbing discovery in the house where he breaks in. Later, when he returns to the same house with his partner in crime, things are no longer how he expected.

Charley Thompson, a teenager living with his single father, gets a summer job working for horse trainer Del Montgomery. Bonding with an aging racehorse named Lean on Pete, Charley is horrified to learn he is bound for slaughter, and so he steals the horse, and the duo embark on an odyssey across the new American frontier.

Mike Kersjes is a special-education teacher and football coach in Michigan. Mike doesn’t talk down to his "special" students. He respects them, and he believes they’re capable of achieving great things. When Mike hears about Space Camp, a competitive education program at the U.S. Space and Rocket Center, he gets an idea. Even though the program is designed for gifted science students, Mike decides participating in the summer program would do wonders for the self-esteem of his young students, one in particular who wants to be an astronaut.