During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker's classroom, where they read the plays of William shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in.

Recounts the events that occur at the end of seventh grade, when a group of friends plan to trick Carlos, an annoying "problem" student who says he is visited by aliens, while they are on a field trip in the mountains of New Hampshire.

As Henry finishes fifth grade, his biggest concern is facing a summer with nothing to do. With his best friend, Max, away at summer camp, it's looking so bad he can feel himself "being pulled by the gravitational force of nothingness." But then Henry does something irresponsible, something with real consequences. And suddenly he'd give anything to go back to the nothingness. Has Henry turned into the dingus Max told him not to be? A classic coming-of-age...

"Lily made her dad an important promise before he passed away; that she would...speak her mind at least five times. But speaking up one time, let alone five, is easier said than done. It'll be even harder now that Lily must attend public school for the first time. Fortunately, she meets curling-obsessed Hobart and quiet Dunya at the beginning of sixth grade. But when Lily and her friends are bullied by Ryan and his mean clique, she quickly discovers...

In 1947, with her jovial stepfather Joe back from the war and family life returning to normal, teen aged Evie, smitten by the handsome young ex-GI who seems to have a secret hold on Joe, finds herself caught in a complicated web of lies whose devastating outcome changes her life and that of her family forever.

"After moving from her home in Haiti to her uncle's home in Brooklyn, ten-year-old Gabrielle, feeling bullied and out of place, makes a misguided deal with a witch."--

A young black boy learns the pain of humiliation and anger when his father is given an unjust jail sentence for stealing a ham from a white man. Learning to read and discovering that things do not die but become part of other things, brings the youngster new hope.