"Terribly shy, India Wimple is brilliant at spelling and her loving family will do whatever it takes to help her compete in a televised national spelling bee in Sydney, Australia."--Title verso page.

Dave and his father argue constanly, often causing his mother to have asthma attacks. One day when he stormed out, he found Cat, and after that met interesting people, making friends. Then he began to see his family differently.

When Judy Moody gets serious about protecting the environment, her little brother Stink thinks she is overdoing it, but she manages to inspire her third grade class to undertake an award-winning, environment-saving project.

In Wisconsin, fourth-grader Ida B spends happy hours being home-schooled and playing in her family's apple orchard, until her mother begins treatment for breast cancer and her parents must sell part of the orchard and send her to public school. [YOUNG HOOSIER]

After learning about the American Revolution on a family trip to Boston, Massachusetts, Judy Moody makes her own Declaration of Independence and tries to prove that she is responsible enough to have more freedoms, such as a higher allowance and her own bathroom.

Cash, Fitch, and Bird Thomas are three siblings in seventh grade together in Park, Delaware. In 1986, as the country waits expectantly for the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger, they each struggle with their own personal anxieties. Cash, who loves basketball but has a newly broken wrist, is in danger of failing seventh grade for the second time. Fitch spends every afternoon playing Major Havoc at the arcade on Main. And Bird, his twelve-year-old...

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.

Twelve-year-old Addie tries to cope with her mother's erratic behavior and being separated from her beloved stepfather and half-sisters when she and her mother go to live in a small trailer by the railroad tracks on the outskirts of Schenectady, New York.

Marya Lupu's parents has always believed that her older brother Luka is destined to be a sorcerer and make the family's fortune, so when the day he is tested turns into a disaster, and the Guild declares that he has no magical talent, they find it easier to blame Marya for upsetting the test than admit the truth, and she is sent to the Dragomir Academy, a school for wayward girls--but a school where she finds friendship and ultimately discovers her...

"Herc Beal knows who he's named after--a mythical hero--but he's no superhero. He's the smallest kid in his class. So when his homeroom teacher at his new middle school gives him the assignment of duplicating the mythical Hercules's amazing feats in real life, he's skeptical. After all, there are no Nemean Lions on Cape Cod, and not a single Hydra in sight. Missing his parents terribly and wishing his older brother wasn't working all the time, Herc...