When he decides to turn his fifth grade teacher's love of the dictionary around on her, clever Nick Allen invents a new word and begins a chain of events that quickly moves beyond his control.

A fifth-grader starts a newspaper with an editorial that prompts her burnt-out classroom teacher to really begin teaching again, but he is later threatened with disciplinary action as a result.

The noisy fifth grade boys of Laketon Elementary School challenge the equally loud fifth grade girls to a "no talking" contest.

When Abby's first letter arrives at a small school in Afghanistan, Sadeed Bayat is chosen to be her pen pal ... well, kind of. He is the best writer, but he is also a boy, and in his village it is not appropriate for a boy to correspond with a girl. So his younger sister dictates and signs the letter, until Sadeed decides what his sister is telling Abby isn't what he'd like Abby to know. As letters go back and forth between Illinois and Afghanistan,...

When Jake was three years old at Miss Lulu's Danity Diaper Day Care Center, what did he know about bullies? Nothing. But he learned fast--too fast! Why? Because Jake is kind of smart, and he's not a tattletale, and he doesn't have a big brother to protect him ..."

Jake is determined to win the grand prize at Despres Elementary School's first science fair, not only for the Hyper-Cross-Functional Bluntium Twelve computer system, but also to beat the annoying third grade know-it-alls, Marsha McCall and Kevin Young.

After twelve-year-old Natalie writes a wonderful novel, her friend Zoe helps her devise a scheme to get it accepted at the publishing house where Natalie's mother works as an editor.

Fifth grader Jack finds himself the target of ridicule at school when it becomes known that his father is one of the janitors, and he turns his anger onto his father.

When his older brother gets in serious trouble, sixth-grader Clay decides to change his own mischief-making ways, but he cannot seem to shake his reputation as a troublemaker.