Hoping that if she wins a local beauty pageant her father will come home, Raymie practices twirling a baton and performing good deeds as she is drawn into an unlikely friendship with a drama queen and a saboteur.

The family routine is upset during Ramona's year in second grade when her father unexpectedly loses his job.

While thirteen-year-old Teddy fights for his life after a football injury at training camp, his friends and family gather to support him and discuss events leading to his coma. Told through dialogue, text messages, newspaper articles, transcripts, an online forum, and Teddy's inner thoughts.

"Adam not only is trying to understand his OCD, while trying to balance his relationship with his divorced parents, but he's also trying to navigate through the issues that teenagers normally face, namely the perils of young love"--

As a project for her "creative non-fiction module" at a school for the arts, Normandy Pale chronicles the work of the Truth Commission, through which she and her two best friends ask classmates and faculty about various open secrets, while Norm's famous sister reveals some very unsettling truths of her own.

Middle-schooler Natalie's yearlong assignment to answer a question using the scientific method leads to truths about her mother's depression and her own cultural identity in this story about the science of hope, love, and miracles.

"A girl struggles to take care of her younger brother with special needs while confronting her own anger issues"--

When Rafe Kane enters middle school, he teams up with his best friend, "Leo the Silent," to create a game to make school more fun by trying to break every rule in the school's code of conduct.

When their mother dies, two very different brothers become even more distant, but when their father's alcoholism sends him into liver failure, the two boys must come face-to-face with their demons--and each other--if they are going to survive an uncertain future.

Boom Broom doesn't think his life could get any worse. Ever since his mother was swept away by a twister, his family has gone crazy. They refuse to leave the house and Halvor, the Viking descendant who rents the room over their garage, will only cook fish for Boom and his sister Mertyle to eat.