Central Kansas Library System

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,...

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...

Life is usually easy for popular sixth grader, Hart Evans, but when his music teacher puts him in charge of the holiday concert, Hart must use all of his leadership skills to unite the other students.

Sixth-grader Ben Pratt's life is full of changes that he does not like--his parents' separation and the plan to demolish his seaside school to build an amusement park--but when the school janitor gives him a tarnished coin with some old engravings and then dies, Ben is drawn into an effort to keep the school from being destroyed.

As the end of sixth grade nears, Jordan Johnson, unhappy that she is only average in appearance, intelligence, and athletic ability, reveals her special skills when disaster strikes her central Illinois elementary school.

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.

It's an ordinary morning in Walla Walla until Lulu, her teacher, the school nurse, and the principal are all infected by a word warp which makes them reduplicate everything they say.

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 ..."

"Grace and Ellie have been best friends since second grade. Ellie's always right in the center of everything--and Grace is usually happy to be Ellie's sidekick. But what happens when everything changes? This time it's Grace who suddenly has everyone's attention when she accidentally starts a new fad at school. It's a fad that has first her class, then her grade, and then the entire school collecting and trading and even fighting over . . . buttons?!...

When things go wrong during a day at the beach, like a ball that drifts away or a gooey ice cream mess, a father could do a lot of things but always picks the loving one.