"Rion Kwirk comes from a rather odd family. His mother named him and his sisters after her favorite constellations, and his father makes funky-flavored jellybeans for a living. One sister acts as if she's always on stage, and the other is a walking dictionary. But no one in the family is more odd than Rion's grandfather, Papa Kwirk. He's the kind of guy who shows up on his motorcycle only on holidays handing out crossbows and stuffed squirrels as...
Kek, an African refugee, is confronted by many strange things at the Minneapolis home of his aunt and cousin, as well as in his fifth grade classroom, and longs for his missing mother, but finds comfort in the company of a cow and her owner.
Twelve-year-old Agnes hates everything about herself, starting with her name, so while spending a summer with her father, a cellist, she decides to become someone else.
"Gertie is a girl on a mission to be the best fifth grader ever in order to show her estranged mother that Gertie doesn't need her--not one bit!"--Provided by publisher.
Cornelia, eleven-years-old and lonely, learns about language and life from an elderly new neighbor who has many stories to share about the fabulous adventures she and her sisters had while traveling around the world.
Thirteen-year-old Nikki Demere is an orphan and a kleptomaniac, making her the perfect girl to portray the Trevors' daughter in witness protection, but she soon learns that the biggest threat to her new family's security comes from her own past.
When he decides to turn his fifth grade teacher's love of the dictionary around on her, clever Nick Allen invents a new word and begins a chain of events that quickly moves beyond his control.
In a predominately white California beach town, the only two black seventh-graders, Alberta and Edie, find hidden journals that uncover family secrets and speak to race relations in the past.
"When twelve-year-old Edie finds letters and photographs in her attic that change everything she thought she knew about her Native American mother's adoption, she realizes she has a lot to learn about her family's history and her own identity"--
One summer's day, ten-year-old India Opal Buloni goes down to the local supermarket for some groceries - and comes home with a dog. But Winn-Dixie is no ordinary dog. It's because of Winn-Dixie that Opal begins to make friends. And it's because of Winn-Dixie that she finally dares to ask her father about her mother, who left when Opal was three. In fact, as Opal admits, just about everything that happens that summer is because of Winn-Dixie.
After her father goes to jail, Cady Bennett, twelve, is taken from foster care to spend a summer with her estranged Aunt Michelle, trying to save her failing pie shop.
Lauren, Isla, Jade, and Archer are friends from their first day at summer camp, but rival cabins, distracting crushes, and the girls' own secrets get in the way of their winning the big contest.
During a massive blackout in rural Nevada, two brothers struggle to survive without their self-reliance-obsessed dad and without enough water cross the desert for help. --
Izzy struggles with her parents' separation, starting middle school, and more, but especially the effect her friendship with her Muslim neighbor, Sitara, has on her best friends, Zelda and Piper.
Olivia, eleven, has a knack for finding lost things but when she promises her brother, Jacob, that she will find his ostrich, she hopes its return will cure his autism.
Billy Dickens discovers that his mysterious father lives in Montana, so this summer Billy will fly across the country, hike a mountain, float a river, dodge a grizzly bear, shoot down a spy drone, and save his own father.
