Twelve-year-old genius and outsider Willow Chance must figure out how to connect with other people and find a surrogate family for herself after her parents are killed in a car accident.

Jake, a budding juvenile delinquent, is sent for home schooling to the arty and eccentric Applewhite family's Creative Academy, where he discovers talents and interests he never knew he had.

Great changes are in store for the highly creative and somewhat eccentric Applewhite family when money problems force them to open a summer camp for gifted children, who almost immediately begin to rebel, while a mysterious interloper watches from the woods.

"Dark times have fallen on McQuarrie Middle School. Dwight is back--and not a moment too soon--as Kellen, Sara, and the gang face a new Menace: the FunTime Educational Program. FunTime is supposed to raise students' standardized test scores. Instead, it's driving everyone crazy. The students turn to Origami Yoda for help"--

"Six lucky kids go on a scavenger hunt inside Mr. Lemoncello's Gameworks factory, where they compete for a chance to win a Titanium Ticket"--

One month before the state standards test are to take place, the Origami Rebel Alliance has found powerful allies in unexpected places in their fight against the FunTime test preparation program, but Principal Rabbski has not yet declared her allegiance.

Each of five children lucky enough to discover an entry ticket into Mr. Willy Wonka's mysterious chocolate factory takes advantage of the situation in his own way.

Orphaned and alone, the four McCready sisters, aged eight to fourteen, move to a house off the coast of British Columbia left them by their great aunt, and get by with the help of neighbors.

Everybody starts somewhere, and once upon a time Luigi Lemoncello was a twelve-year-old boy in a large family who dreamed of being a showman; he gets his first chance working for a famous barker at a summer carnival where a mysterious puzzle leads him and his friends on a treasure hunt.

"Eleven-year-old Brian's summer turns out a lot less boring than expected when he encounters a huge, wacky house in the forest and befriends the eccentric family that lives there"--