Fifth-grader Cally Louise Fisher stops talking, partly because her father and brother never speak of her mother who died a year earlier, but visions of her mother, friendships with a homeless man and a disabled boy, and a huge dog ensure that she still communicates.

"Follow a little girl as she takes you on a tour through all of her favorite things, from the holes she digs to the hugs she gives"--

As the end of sixth grade nears, Jordan Johnson, unhappy that she is only average in appearance, intelligence, and athletic ability, reveals her special skills when disaster strikes her central Illinois elementary school.

On an island off the coast of Maine, where children ride lobster boats to school, Piper wants a horse but finds, instead, another object hidden in the red maple tree.

After taking in Gizmo the Sheltie puppy, the Petersons learn this little puppy must have something to do before his energy destroys everything in Charles and Lizzie's house.

Twelve-year-old Ben, who aspires to be a police officer, struggles to do the right thing when his parents suddenly take him and his little sister "on vacation," and he learns they took a large amount of money that was mistakenly deposited in their bank account.

In a story told from different viewpoints, five sixth-graders, facing various challenges and under pressure to do well on statewide assessment tests, agree to a plan for acing the tests.

Everyone in the Ellis family is excellent, except Ed the dog, who is determined to find something at which he, too, can excel.

From the publisher. Iris Anderson is only 15, but she's quickly mastering the art of deception in this YA novel for fans of Veronica Mars. It's the fall of 1942 and Iris's world is rapidly changing. Her Pop is back from the war with a missing leg, limiting his ability to do the physically grueling part of his detective work. Iris is dying to help, especially when she discovers that one of Pop's cases involves a boy at her school. Now, instead of sitting...

"17-year-old Gwen Castle is a working-class girl determined to escape her small island town, but when rich-kid Cass Somers, with whom she has a complicated romantic history, shows up, she's forced to reassess her feelings about her loving, complex family, her lifelong best friends, her wealthy employer, the place she lives, and the boy she can't admit she loves"--