Helped by her father, a young girl prepares a flower garden as a birthday surprise for her mother.

Twelve-year-old Olivia endeavors to care for her younger sister, possibly make a new friend in the quirky and secretive Bart, and keep hope alive for her, her family, and her community of idiosyncratic neighbors at Sunny Pines Trailer Park.

Dedicated slacker Cameron Boxer thinks he has found gamer heaven: playing video games online for an audience (and money); but the Positive Action Group (the club he created to keep his parents off his back) keeps getting in the way with meetings and fund-raisers for worthy causes, and his friends keep turning to him for plans and girlfriend advice, plus Elvis the beaver is back chewing on the back wall--and all Cameron wants to do is to conquer the...

Jack likes to trash-pick, and when his elderly neighbors move out and leave a promising pile of refuse outside, he finds a box that holds the Secret Parent's Handbook that lets him and his friends make the rules at home for a change.

Fifteen-year-old Janie feels devastated when she discovers that her boyfriend has betrayed her and her family through his college radio program.

Other than their first names, Naomi Marie and Naomi Edith are sure they have nothing in common, and they wouldn't mind keeping it that way. Naomi Marie starts clubs at the library and adores being a big sister. Naomi Edith loves quiet Saturdays and hanging with her best friend in her backyard. And while Naomi Marie's father lives a few blocks away, Naomi Edith wonders how she's supposed to get through each day a whole country apart from her mother....

"Twelve-year-old Clea wants to do her homework, follow instructions, pay attention in school, and play chess on the school team, but somehow she cannot focus on whatever is in front of her, and the other kids at school are starting to notice and make fun of her; when her worried parents take her to be tested she finds out that she has ADHD (only without the hyperactivity)--and with help from the psychiatrist who seems to really understand her she...

"When eleven-year-old Yumi Chung stumbles into a kids' comedy camp she is mistaken for another student, so she decides to play the part"--Provided by publisher.

Always turning to her Wheel of Fortunes, a cardboard circle covered with wisdom she's collected from fortune cookies, for answers and a dose of luck, 12-year-old Maya must find the courage to write her own fortune to answer her deep-down questions.

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...