Reappearance of Sam Webber (Hardcover, Turtleback School & Library ed.)

All his life, people have called eleven-year-old Sam Webber "Little Sam". But now Big Sam has disappeared, perhaps for good. Without his dad, Little Sam just plain "Samuel" -- and lonely. When he and his mom have to move from their comfortable Baltimore home to a rough inner-city neighborhood, he has plenty to be afraid of: the depression that seems to be engulfing his mother, the taunts of a middle-school bully, his own grief, and bouts of nausea and hyperventilation. But when Greely, the janitor at his school, strikes up an unlikely friendship, Sam begins to see his life -- like the varied row houses of his new neighborhood -- in a gentler light. Will a surer, stronger Sam Webber emerge from the shadows?