"Garvey's father has always wanted Garvey to be athletic, but Garvey is interested in astronomy, science fiction, reading--anything but sports. Feeling like a failure, he comforts himself with food. Garvey is kind, funny, smart, a loyal friend, and he is also overweight, teased by bullies, and lonely. When his only friend encourages him to join the school chorus, Garvey's life changes. The chorus finds a new soloist in Garvey, and through chorus,...

Sent with her mother to the safety of a relative's home in Cincinnati when her Syrian hometown is overshadowed by violence, Jude worries for the family members who were left behind as she adjusts to a new life with unexpected surprises.

Jack is studying poetry again in school, and he continues to write poems reflecting his understanding of famous poems and how they relate to his life.

Ruby is a young elephant who loves playing in mud, floppy-running, and spending time with her best friends, Ivan the silverback gorilla and Bob the mutt. She loves her herd at the sanctuary, too, but she also misses the elephants of her past--the family she was born into on the African savanna and Aunt Stella at the mall circus. Ruby remembers her life before the sanctuary, before the circus, before she knew what loss meant. When she shares her story...

Jake likes helping people, skating, singing, playing Bingo and Name That Tune, and reading mysteries and comics aloud. He also likes avoiding people his own age . . . and the cruelty of mirrors . . . and food. Jake has read about kids like him in books--the weird one, the outsider--and would do anything not to be that kid, including shrink himself down to nothing. But the less he eats, the bigger he feels. How long can Jake punish himself before he...

"Capturing the shock and reverberations of the COVID-19 pandemic through poetry, as Garvey's life goes into lockdown and his father becomes sick, Garvey must find a way to use his newfound musical skills to bring hope to both his father and himself"--

"A story told in verse from multiple perspectives of the graduating fifth grade class of Emerson Elementary. The kids join together to try to save their school from being torn down to make way for a supermarket"--

When twelve-year-old Maddie hatches a scheme for a secret sleepover with her two best friends, she ends up waking up to a nightmare. She's alone--left behind in a town that has been mysteriously evacuated and abandoned. With no one to rely on, no power, and no working phone lines or internet access, Maddie slowly learns to survive on her own. Her only companions are a Rottweiler named George and all the books she can read. After a rough start, Maddie...

Gabby daydreams to tune out her parents' arguments, but when her parents divorce and she begins a new school, daydreaming gets her into trouble. Her mother scolds her for it, her teacher keeps telling her to pay attention, and the other kids tease her...until she finds a friend who also daydreams and her teacher decides to work a daydreaming-writing session into every school day. With a notebook "thick with daydreams," Gabby grows more confident about...

In the midst of adjusting to a new class, eighth-grader Anoop finds his patka drawing unwarranted attention, leading him to contemplate faith, identity, and his role in the world, especially as his grandfather approaches the end of life in India and attacks on American Sikhs intensify.