Aspiring to be the fastest sprinter on his elite middle school's track team, gifted runner Ghost finds his goal challenged by a tragic past with a violent father.

It's not like I meant for him to get hurt. . . . Julian Twerski isn't a bully. He's just made a big mistake. So when he returns to school after a weeklong suspension, his English teacher offers him a deal: if he keeps a journal and writes about the terrible incident that got him and his friends suspended, he can get out of writing a report on Shakespeare. Julian jumps at the chance. And so begins his account of life in sixth grade--blowing up homemade...

When Shelley leaves Oregon to spend the winter in California, she feels she is the happiest girl in the world, for in her new high school, she meets Philip--the "only boy." A sixteen-year-old girl gains perspective into herself and her family when whe leaves her comfortable Oregon home and spends a year visiting with friends in California... She learns, in the midst of the friendly Michie family, that there are many ways to be oneself, and many different...

Seeker, the Wildman, and Morning Star discover that the mysterious warrior sect they had been so desperate to join is not quite what it appears from the outside.

Having been rejected by the Nomana--the revered warrior-monk order they long to join--sixteen-year-olds Seeker and Morning Star, along with a curious pirate named Wildman, attempt to prove that they are worthy of joining the community, after all.

From bestselling author Terri Libenson, this is a story about how there's more to everyone than meets the eye.

Pride. Popularity . . . Poetry? Middle school.

Ruby and Mia are total opposites:

Ruby is a little awkward, not a "joiner," and loves to write poetry.

While Mia is type A, popular(ish), and wants to be class prez.

They used to be friends. But now they have nothing in common anymore. . . . Or

...

Although her mother, Poppy Pendle, believes magic ruins lives, eleven-year-old Cat Campbell is a late-blooming witch whose magical abilities are bursting to be mastered.

In the shadow of the construction of the Brooklyn Bridge, eighth-graders and new neighbors Bird Mallon and Thomas Neary make some decisions about what they want to do with their lives.

"It's 1935, and tuberculosis is ravaging the nation. But what happens when you actually have it? When Halle and her mother both come down with TB, they are shunned--and then they are sent to the J.N. Adam Tuberculosis Hospital: far from home, far from family, far from the world. Tucked away in the woods of upstate New York, the hospital is a closed and quiet place. But it is not, Halle learns, a prison. Free of her worried and difficult father for...

Priyanka Das has so many unanswered questions: Why did her mother abandon her home in India years ago? What was it like there? And most important, who is her father and why did her mom leave him behind? But Pri's mom avoids these questions - the topic of India is permanently closed. For Pri, her mother's homeland can only exist in her imagination. That is, until she finds a mysterious pashmina tucked away in a forgotten suitcase. When she wraps herself...