Seventh-grader Zoey Albro focuses on caring for three younger siblings and avoiding rich classmates at school until her fascination with octopuses gets her on the debate team and she begins to speak out.

As Bridge makes her way through seventh grade on Manhattan's Upper West Side with her best friends, curvacious Em, crusader Tab, and a curious new friend-- or more than friend-- Sherm, she finds the answer she has been seeking since she barely survived an accident at age eight: "What is my purpose?"

Suspended unjustly from elite Middlefield Prep, Donte Ellison studies fencing with a former champion, hoping to put the racist fencing team captain in his place.

On Cape Cod in 1972, eleven-year-old Naomi, known as Chirp for her love of birds, gets help from neighbor Joey as she struggles to cope with her mother's multiple sclerosis and its effect on her father and sister.

Mischa Abramavicius is a walking, talking, top-scoring, perfectly well-rounded college application in human form. When all of her college applications are rejected-- even her safety school-- she is shocked and devastated. Grappling with the prospect of an uncertain future, she begins to believe that her transcript was hacked. With the help of her best friend and sometimes crush, Nate, and a group of eccentric techies known as "The Ophelia Syndicate,"...

Sixth grader Alec can't put a good book down. So when Principal Vance lays down the law -- pay attention in class, or else -- Alec takes action. He can't lose all his reading time, so he starts a club. A club he intends to be the only member of. After all, reading isn't a team sport, and no one would want to join something called the Losers Club, right? But as more and more kids find their way to Alec's club -- including his ex-friend turned bully...

"Hazel 'Hazy' Bloom uses her tomorrow power--her ability to see visions of things that happen one day in the future--to try to convince her parents she's ready for a pet iguana"--

"When a school variety show leaves Olive stranded without an act to join, she wonders why all of her friends have already formed their own groups without her."--Publisher's description.

Missing the familiarity of first grade and imagining the impossible tasks assigned by his next teacher, a boy refuses to start second grade.

"Third-grader Gavin and his friends aren't sure what to make of the new boy in their class, Khufu. He doesn't look or act like other kids. When Gavin's bike goes missing, they think Khufu stole it, but did he?"--