Times are tough around the little brown house! The widowed Mrs. Pepper has to sew all day long just to earn enough to pay the rent and to feed the five growing Peppers. But she faces poverty and trouble with a stout heart, a smiling face, and the help of her jolly brood: blue-eyed Ben, the eldest and the man of the house at the age of 11; pretty Polly, so eager to cook for the family and make everyone happy and comfortable; and the three littlest...

"Rose Alice Anders is Little Luck. Lucky to be born into the Anders family. Lucky to be just as special and magical as the most revered man in town--her father. The whole town has been waiting for Rose to turn twelve, when she can join them in their annual capturing of magic on New Year's Day and become the person she was born to be. But when that special day finally comes, Rose barely captures one tiny jar of magic. Now Rose's dad won't talk to her...

Penny comes home from school eager to share her very own song, but must wait until the time is right to teach it to her parents and the babies.

As she turns twelve during the summer of 1953, Penny gains new insights into herself and her family while also learning a secret about her father's death. It's 1953 and 11-year-old Penny dreams of a summer of butter pecan ice cream, swimming, and baseball. But nothing's that easy in Penny's family. For starters, she can't go swimming because her mother's afraid she'll catch polio at the pool. To make matters worse, her favorite uncle is living in...

Comedian Jamie Grimm, accompanied by Uncle Frank, New Aunt Flora, and friends, circles the globe as host of regional competitions, then competes, himself, in the Planet's Funniest Kid Worldwide contest.

Separated from her best friends, Raymie and Beverly, twelve-year-old Louisiana struggles to oppose the winds of fate (and her eccentric grandmother) and find a way home. When Louisiana Elefante's granny wakes her up in the middle of the night to tell her that the day of reckoning has arrived and they have to leave home immediately, Louisiana figures that it is only a matter of time before Granny changes her mind and they come back home. After all,...

"Harriet Wermer is unhappy about having to spend her summer with her grandmother on Marble island until she discovers a mystery involving her Dad from when he was a boy living on the island"--Title verso page.

On a summer visit to her grandmother's cottage by the ocean, twelve-year-old Martha gains perspective on the death of a classmate, on her relationship with her grandmother, on her feelings for an older boy, and on her plans to be a writer.

"Life used to be great for Rose: full of friends, a loving mom, and a growing fashion blog. But when her mother dies in a car crash, Rose is sent away to live with a strange grandmother she hardly knows and forced to attend a new school where mean girls ridicule her at every turn. The one place Rose finds refuge is in her grandmother's Tudor-style greenhouse. But one night, she sees a strange light glowing from within it. She climbs a ladder to investigate......

Relates the adventures and misadventures of the four Moffat children living with their widowed mother in a yellow house on New Dollar Street in the small town of Cranbury, Connecticut.