After a mining accident kills her father and leaves her brother missing, twelve-year-old Ana puts her dreams on hold and goes into the mine to help her family survive in their impoverished Bolivian silver mining community.

After Marvin, a beetle, makes a miniature drawing as an eleventh birthday gift for James, a human with whom he shares a house, the two new friends work together to help recover a Durer drawing stolen from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"With her life recently turned upside down, 12-year-old Addie is uncomfortable in her own skin until the world of virtual reality sparks her imagination and leads to an exciting new project, a new friend, and to reconnecting with who she's always been"--Provided by the publisher.

While coping with his parents' separation, eleven-year-old Skeet spends most of Spring Break in his skiff on a Florida river, where he finds a manatee shot to death and begins looking for the killer.

The Finches, a Connecticut family, sponsor an African refugee family of four, all of whom have been scarred by the horrors of civil war, and who inadvertently put their benefactors in harm's way.

When his teacher asks him to write a persuasive argument about something he really wants, fourth-grader Calvin creates a unique way to express his desire for a dog.

Down on their luck, the Tooting family buys an old camper van and begins repairing it, but after installing an engine that once belonged to an extraordinary car, they are off to find other original parts, pursued by a sinister man who wants Chitty for himself.

Myra, a high school senior, will do almost anything to win a contest and earn money for a study trip to the Galapagos Islands, which would mean getting away from her demanding family life in Utah and ex-boyfriend Erik, but Erik is set on winning the same contest.

When fifth-grade twins, Amy and Todd, tackle a school project, they also have to cope with issues of friendship at school and problems at home, including their father's unemployment.

Twelve-year-old Quijana is a biracial girl, desperately trying to understand the changes that are going on in her life; her mother rarely gets home before bedtime, her father suddenly seems to be trying to get in touch with his Guatemalan roots (even though he never bothered to teach Quijana Spanish), she is about to start seventh grade in the Texas town where they live and she is worried about fitting in--and Quijana suspects that her parents are...