No matter how bad your past is, you still don’t want it erased.

Lucas crept around the building to the back parking lot. And there it was, just like he had seen from the roof—a baby lying in a shopping cart. Lucas’s mind went negative. What if the kid was dead? He tried to think if he had ever seen a dead person before. He’d never been to a funeral, and he knew he had never seen a dead baby. And he definitely didn’t want to.
His heart pounded in his chest.
Lucas walked, almost tiptoed, toward the shopping cart. The last of the parking lot lights flickered out, leav-ing only the early morning sun. He moved across the blacktop, making sure not to step on a white line. At this moment he needed all the luck he could muster. As he got closer to the cart, he held his breath and swallowed. Then he grabbed the shopping cart handle and looked over into the basket.
He gasped.

These books are simple and short and lead into open discussion with the kids.

There's a bunch of kids ? and they eat and talk about books.

This was a land of lost souls. Human beings who had weathered great storms in life, had suffered unspeakable loss, had been put to painful tests of existence, and still remained standing—but just barely.

It's bad rhyme and by and large, good books for kids are better than that.