Seventh-grader John "Crash" Coogan has always been comfortable with his tough, aggressive behavior, until his relationship with an unusual Quaker boy and his grandfather's stroke make him consider the meaning of friendship and the importance of family.

When orphaned eleven-year-old Pollyanna comes to live with austere and wealthy Aunt Polly, her philosophy of gladness brings happiness to her aunt and other unhappy members of the community.

Learning disabilities make school painful for Annabelle, thirteen, but a summer of swimming with the high school team is fantastic until a prank goes wrong, spoiling everything.

Faced with the difficulties of growing up and choosing a religion, eleven- going on twelve-year-old Margaret talks over her problems with her own private God.

"While the other fairies are away, mischievous Nix is charged with protecting the forest, but he has no magic to prevent a man from moving into a woodland cottage."--

Suds learns that his best friend is wrong. You don't have to be a tough guy, a "rat, " to be a grown up fourth grader.

While preparing for a role in the school play, twelve-year-old Leo finds an autobiography that his father wrote as a teenager and ponders the ways people change as they grow up. Includes the text for the play, "Rumpopo's Porch."

Shortly before her thirteenth birthday, shy and withdrawn Tara is sent to stay with her aunt, uncle, and cousin in her parents' hometown of Willow Falls, where she makes friends and becomes involved with an elderly buyer and seller of collectibles, who seems to be trying to give Tara some kind of mysterious message.

Living in the family car in their small North Carolina town after their father leaves them virtually penniless, Georgina, desperate to improve their situation and unwilling to accept her overworked mother's calls for patience, persuades her younger brother to help her in an elaborate scheme to get money by stealing a dog and then claiming the reward that the owners are bound to offer.

Sixth-grader Peter Lee, in a desperate attempt to regain the popularity he had in elementary school, discovers that serving detention can win him important friends, much to the dismay of his over-achieving eighth-grade sister, Sunny.