David Lubar

When ordinary third-grader Ed finds a coin with the words "strange" and "stranger" on both sides, weird things start happening around him--but when his friends start blaming him for all the weirdness Ed wonders if this coin is not too strange for comfort.

Ed, his friends, and even his little sister are eager to go to Dinosaur Discovery, but ever since he found the magic coin called Silver Center, strange things happen around Ed--so he is not surprised to find that a blue dinosaur has followed his sister home.

Ed and his friends accidentally sign up for a playwriting contest, a dangerous activity for someone who possesses the Silver Center, and what they write is pretty strange, but when it comes to actually performing the play, Ed's magic coin lends new meaning to the words "stage fright.".

Following a difficult freshman year, Scott Hudson is hoping that sophomore year will be easier, but after a disaster of a first week he finds himself faced with new challenges--including a particularly demanding English teacher, a school board member whose budget cutting is covering up a crime, and the discovery that his friendship with Lee, the Goth girl he met last year, is turning into something else entirely.