From the Publisher: "They say I'm wired bad, or wired sad, but there's no doubt about it-I'm wired." Joey Pigza's got heart, he's got a mom who loves him, and he's got "dud meds," which is what he calls the Ritalin pills that are supposed to even out his wild mood swings. Sometimes Joey makes bad choices. He learns the hard way that he shouldn't stick his finger in the pencil sharpener, or swallow his house key, or run with scissors. Joey ends...

Joey tries to keep his life from degenerating into total chaos when his mother sends him to be home-schooled with a hostile blind girl, his divorced parents cannot stop fighting, and his grandmother is dying of emphysema.

Joey's father returns, calling himself Charles Heinz and apologizing for his past bad behavior, and he swears that once Joey and his mother change their names and help him fix up the old diner he has bought, their lives will change for the better.

Living with his mother in a Berlin apartment house, Rico, a young boy with ADHD, enjoys playing detective games but when his friend Oskar suddenly disappears, possibly taken by a serial kidnapper, Rico determines to use his skills to find his friend.

If seven-year-old Benjamin (aka Bug) Blonsky were a superhero, he d be "Bug Boy with the Power to Annoy." That s what his big sister says. Mom says he s wiggly and can t sit still. Dad says he s easily distracted. On this day, Bug's "choices" drawing pictures of pig roller coasters during math time, making armpit noises when his teacher bends over have landed him in a heap of trouble, so now he s writing a list of what not to do: his list of don'ts....

Sixth-grader Emilia Torres struggles with ADHD, her controlling abuela, her mother's work commitments, her father's distance after returning from deployment, evolving friendships, and a conflict over school redistricting.

After going on a quest across Los Angeles together, Quentin, Vic, Nevaeh, and Mara, four very different foster children, realize that they have become a family.

After learning she cannot take a cake decorating class with her best friend, partly because her parents consider her a quitter, eleven-year-old Eliza tries to prove herself by sticking with a taekwondo class all summer.