"It's fun to be a Baby-sitters Little Sister. No fair! Karen is having a bad-luck day. Her favorite jeans are missing. There's no prize in the Crunch-O cereal box. And Boo-Boo the cat runs away from her! Karen tries everything to make her day better. But her bad luck just won't go away. She even gets punished and sent to her room! Poor Karen--will this be her worst day ever?" -- Back cover.

The summer that Hattie turns twelve, she meets the childlike uncle she never knew and becomes friends with a girl who works at the carnival that comes to Hattie's small town. Twelve-year-old Hattie learns that living life fully means facing both the good times and the bad upon the closing of her Uncle Adam's "school"- an institution for the mentally disabled.

Karen can't wait for Thanksgiving. Granny and Grandad are coming to visit. And Karen's family is going to New York City to see the Thanksgiving Day parade. But Grandad isn't feeling well, and Seth and Mommy are busy in the shop. Karen's Turkey Day is not turning out the way she thought -- but maybe Karen can fix things.

Mallory needs peace and quiet if she's going to win the Young Authors Day Award for Best Overall Fiction in the Sixth Grade, but the only way to get it is to stop babysitting.

Since her parents' divorce, Dawn lives in Connecticut with her mother while her brother and father are in California, but after a week's vacation in sunny, healthy southern California, Dawn isn't sure she wants to return to the East Coast.