After the death of her mother in an automobile accident, seventh-grader Serena, who has gotten the lead in her middle school play, is left to handle the day-to-day challenges of caring for herself and her younger brother when their father cannot pull himself out of his depression.

Terrible memories resurface when Charlie's girlfriend asks questions about his childhood.

Expelled over The Photo that was posted to his Twitter account, Will Foster, seventeen, is determined to find out who took the picture and why he and three other students were targeted.

When thirteen-year-old Rock helps his friend Liza run away from home, he wonders whether escaping from his own troubled family would be an act of patriotism or of treason.

When Stephanie's father and Diana's mother go on a marriage retreat to deal with some big problems, Stephanie goes to cheerleading camp and Diana stays with her father, but when everyone returns, things seem worse than ever.

Cut from AAA hockey last season, seventh-grader Hudson Pickle needs to make the basketball team this year. But, after having an asthma attack at the first tryout, his chances aren't looking good.

Maverick Falconer is just starting middle school and he wishes he were a hero like his father because maybe then he could deal with his mother's drinking and series of abusive boyfriends, not to mention the kids who bully him in middle school (pretty much the same ones who bullied him in elementary school)--but as the year passes he begins to realize that other kids have problems too, and maybe if they can all survive sixth-grade things will get better....

Jono realizes his mother's drinking has gone too far when she hits his little sister Julie, and decides it is time to take Julie and run away.

Eleven-year-old Yonder stopped talking when her mother died, and she stopped going to school because of the bullies, knowing that her father would never even notice (although the social worker did); indeed the only creature that seems to care about her is the one-eyed Shetland pony called Dirt who lives on the neighboring farm--so when she discovers that Dirt is about to be sold for horsemeat she is determined to find a way to save him.

After surviving sixth grade, Rafe expects seventh grade to be a fun zone because he has been accepted to art school in the big city, but when he discovers it is more competitive than he expected, he sets out to turn his boring life into the inspiration for a work of art.