Two thirteen-year-old boys share neighborhood adventures, complaints about their older sisters, family secrets, and even guilt that bind them together in a special friendship.

During the summer before their seventh-grade year, Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia, and Stacey tackle difficulties, including family problems, crushes, moving, and making new friends.

Twelve-year-old Fern feels invisible in her family, where grumpy eighteen-year-old Sarah is working at the family restaurant, fourteen-year-old Holden is struggling with school bullies and his emerging homosexuality, and adorable, three-year-old Charlie is always the center of attention, and when tragedy strikes, the fragile bond holding the family together is stretched almost to the breaking point.

Twelve-year-old Missy tries to learn more about her mother's odd behavior as she and her two friends share some secrets during a long, hot summer in Mississippi toward the end of World War II.

Raised by his grandparents, first in Mississippi then in Wisconsin, ten-year-old Lymon moves to Chicago in 1945 to live with the mother he never knew, while yearning for his father.

Zach, Alice, and Poppy, friends from a Pennsylvania middle school who have long enjoyed acting out imaginary adventures with dolls and action figures, embark on a real-life quest to Ohio to bury a doll made from the ashes of a dead girl.

After surviving sixth grade, Rafe expects seventh grade to be a fun zone because he has been accepted to art school in the big city, but when he discovers it is more competitive than he expected, he sets out to turn his boring life into the inspiration for a work of art.