Ten-year-old Camille McPhee relates the ups and downs of her fourth-grade year at her Idaho elementary school as she tries to adjust to the absence of her best friend, maintain control of her low-blood sugar, cope with the intensifying conflict between her parents, and understand the importance of honesty and fairness.

Branded a troublemaker due to his anger over everything from being bullied to his sister's death a year before, Marcus begins to control himself and cope with his problems at home and at his inner-city school when an unlikely mentor teaches him to play chess.

When her father loses his job, seven-year-old Ramona Quimby thinks of ways to deal with the many problems that develop.

When Rafe Khatchadorian enters middle school, he teams up with his best friend, "Leo the Silent," to create a game to make school more fun by trying to break every rule in the school's code of conduct.

When Nikki's father left her family, she thought all of the screaming and fighting at home would be over, but when he returns, she calls on the support of her mother and friends to pull her through the difficult time.

"When six students are chosen to participate in a weekly talk with no adults allowed, they discover that when they're together, it's safe to share the hopes and fears they have to hide from the rest of the world"-- Six kids discover the power of sharing their secrets and their stories ... It all starts when six kids are sent to a room for a weekly chat - by themselves, with no adults to listen in. At first they fear this new unfamiliar and wonder...

Unable to cope with her father's alcoholism, thirteen-year-old Sam corresponds with an older student, sharing her family problems and asking for advice.

Fourteen-year-old Kevin is very good at lying and doing so makes life easier, but when he finds himself in big trouble with his friends, family, and teachers, he must find a way to end his lies forever.

In Crystal Springs, Louisiana, when sixteen-year-old James finds his mother lying in her bed, dead, he tries to run the household by himself, hiding his mother's death from the authorities, caring for his little brother, and scrounging for food until things become increasingly desperate.

When Larissa Renaud starts receiving eerie phone calls on a disconnected phone in her family's shop, Bayou Bridge Antiques, she finds herself directed to the river bank near her house, where a cloud of fireflies take her on a journey through time to learn the secrets of her family's past--and save their future.