Shadia Simmons

Mahree Bok lives on a farm in South Africa. Her father is a policeman who cannot hide his joy when activist Steve Biko is caught by the South African authorities. Piper Dellums is the daughter of a US congressman from California and who lives in a nice home in Washington DC. When Mahree is chosen to spend a semester at the Dellums' house, she doesn't expect that her host family would be black. Nor do her hosts suspect that she is not a black South African.

A young widow still grieving over the death of her husband finds herself being comforted by a local housepainter.

Zenon Kar is 15 and lives on a space station which the military has taken over and is dismantling. She receives a mysterious signal and must convince everyone that it's from aliens who have come to help them.

Amy thinks her father has bought her the perfect gift: a new ventriloquist's dummy. However, it soon becomes apparent that there is more to this dummy than meets the eye.

When 15-year-old Matt Freeman gets his girlfriend, Francesca, pregnant, her family decides to put the unborn baby up for adoption. Matt agrees to the decision, but begins to rethink it. This movie is taken from the father's point of view.

A fortyish cancer-stricken, emaciated Frank Crosby and his fifteen-year-old son Clay, who is the healthful, youthful image of his father, are spending an afternoon enjoying the atmosphere of Venice Beach. They enter Oddities, a store where the gypsy woman owner gives them a pair of special wingtip shoes. Later that night in the hospital where Frank lay dying, he shares with Clay his memory of a postcard image: a golf course where people are playing and are leisurely sipping tea. Frank dies and leaves behind a distraught family: Clay, his little sister Maggie, and their mother Janice. Clay wistfully goes to his father's closet and finds the wingtips from earlier in the day. Putting them on, he is transported back in time and becomes his father as a child. He discovers he can travel back and forth in time just by putting on or taking off the shoes. Clay learns a great deal about his father's early years and is eager to learn more.

The young-adult novel by Garrison Keillor and Jenny Lind Nilsson gets a lively update in this Showtime feature about an unusual family in Sandy Bottom, Wisconsin. The Greens share musical aspirations, but daughter Rachel (Madeline Zima), a talented violinist, is the one most likely to achieve them. Norman (Tom Irwin) is a dairy farmer and Ingrid (Glenne Headly) is a choir director who abandoned the piano when she married and settled down, but the Greens are a happy family, for the most part. The trick is finding a way to reconcile their dreams with a reality that may hold more riches than they realize. When Norman gets a chance to conduct the local orchestra for the Dairy Days celebration, it's an opportunity for the family to come together, not just with each other, but with a community they had never fully appreciate

"Meeting cute" while Jodie's son Timmy enthuses over a model train set, Jodie and the raffish but likeable Steve immediately hit it off, but she is already engaged to conservative lawyer Paul Davis. The days between Christmas and New Year's Eve, Jodie finds herself in the unenviable position of choosing between two men whom she adores equally--a job not made easier by the well-meaning interference of son Timmy.

Four young black men kill a white woman. Now the D.A. is very cautious how to pursue this case because it might start a riot. And adding fuel to the fire is a bombastic and vocal black community leader, who's saying that they will not have a fair trial and that they were justified in their actions because they were in fear for their lives

A teenager goes to desperate lengths to get attention when her mother gives birth to quints.

The story is about a married couple with children on the verge of divorce. Their imminent divorce, like many, is due to their mutual lack of respect and compassion for each other and the effect it has on their children. When the family makes a traumatic move to New Orleans they move into an old, Victorian home. There, in the attic, the children think they have found the "magic" to solve their parent's problems. The children accidentally manage to switch the souls of their parents. Now the wife must face the perils of the lockeroom and pressures as family breadwinner and the husband must face pregnancy and bond with his children. Newfound respect and appreciation is gained as the couple finally find out what it's like to walk in the other person's shoes.

Josie finds herself seemingly trapped within an alternate dimension which she inadvertently created by taking Victor's power source, the floating chi ball, to prevent a future she believed to be her fault and not the destined timeline.

Sometimes it takes something special to bring a mother and daughter together. For thirteen year-old Lucy and her mom, Holly, it took a little magic. One day a strange computer glitch causes Holly to transform into a teenager leading to craziness, fun and ultimately true friendship.

This spooky anthology series for kids recounts ghost stories told by the young members of the Midnight Society as they gather around a campfire. Each episode opens with members of the Midnight Society at their secret spot in the woods, where they prepare their fire and the night's storyteller announces the title of the his or her offering. However, the cameras soon leave the storyteller and switch to the tale being told.

Anything can turn spooky in this horror anthology series based on the best-selling books by master of kid horror, R.L. Stine. In every episode, see what happens when regular kids find themselves in scary situations, and how they work to confront and overcome their fears.

Life with Derek is a Canadian television sitcom that aired on Family and VRAK.TV in Canada and on Disney Channel in the United States. The series premiered on Family on September 18, 2005, and ran for four seasons, ending its run on March 25, 2009. The series starred Michael Seater and Ashley Leggat as the two oldest children in a stepfamily. It ended with 70 episodes and one spin-off television film, entitled Vacation with Derek.

Black Hole High is a Canadian science fiction television program which first aired in North America in October 2002 on NBC and Discovery Kids. It is set at the fictional boarding school of the title, where a Science Club investigates mysterious phenomena, most of which is centered around a wormhole located on the school grounds. Spanning four seasons, the series developed into a success, and has been sold to networks around the globe. Created by Jim Rapsas, the series intertwines elements of mystery, drama, romance, and comedy. The writing of the show is structured around various scientific principles, with emotional and academic struggles combined with unfolding mysteries of a preternatural nature. In addition to its consistent popularity among children, it has been recognised by adults as strong family entertainment. Forty-two episodes of the series, each roughly twenty-five minutes in length, have been produced, the last three of which premiered in January 2006. Those three final episodes that aired were combined into a film, Strange Days: Conclusions. The show was filmed at the Auchmar Estate on the Hamilton Escarpment in Hamilton, Ontario.

Ace Lightning is a children's television series co-produced by the BBC and Alliance Atlantis, which has been broadcast in the United States as well as in the United Kingdom and Australia. The show was filmed in Canada, but the program was set in America. It ran for two seasons, and spawned several books, including a yearbook for the year 2003, an activity book and a companion to the series. A computer game based upon the show was released in 2002. Most of the programme was live-action, although the heroes and villains from the video game were created using CGI. The primary focus of the series is the power of friendship, as well as the battle between good and evil. The series is significant in that until its creation, live action and CGI had not been attempted to such a huge and constant degree within a weekly television serial.

Based on the best-selling Scholastic books; Dear America features the rich and spirited stories of young women at various turning points in history.