Claudia Mills

Nine-year-old Mason's parents keep trying to get him a pet, but until he and his best friend Brody adopt a three-legged dog, he's not interested.

Gus despairs of coming up with something interesting and impressive for his second-grade class's show-and-tell, until he gets a great idea while visiting Grandpa.

Annika hopes to change her best friends' hatred of math by winning a Sudoku contest, but she does not realize how important their lack of mathematical ability is until they make a mistake at the school carnival.

Kelsey is the best reader in her third grade class, and she is determined to lead her class to victory in the all-school reading contest.

While dealing with her parents' separation and her best friend's distance, Amanda is able to work out some of her anxiety through her fifth-grade project--writing a diary from the point of view of a ten-year-old girl whose brothers fight on opposite sides in the Civil War.

After Gus, who would rather play outside than practice music, does not do too well at his piano recital, his grandfather shows him how music can be fun.

Third-grader Vera, a budding artist who loves every minute of her after-school comic-book camp, searches for a way to get her mother's permission to attend the camp's final field trip to Comic-Con.

"Twelve-year-old Autumn wants more than anything to be a real author, but when she wins a contest by writing something too personal about her brother, she has to decide if her dreams are more important than their relationship"-- Provided by publisher.

Nora Alpers, fourth-grade scientist, likes things to be just so. Her ant farm, her hobbies, her friends. So when Coach Joe, her teacher, informs the class that all the students have to try something new and write a report about it, Nora is not pleased. She is even less pleased when her classmate Emma seems to decide that befriending Nora will be her "new" thing. Does Emma really want to be friends or is this just an assignment for school? Nora,...

"Science-obsessed fourth grader Nora wants to be like her scientist family and publish a professional research paper on her favorite subject: her ant farm!"-- Provided by publisher.