Five stories exploring the meaning of friendship between two friends. They test each other's patience while waiting for seeds to grow or their willpower over a bowl of cookies.

The family routine is upset during Ramona's year in second grade when her father unexpectedly loses his job.

After inheriting her uncle's homesteading claim in Montana, sixteen-year-old orphan Hattie Brooks travels from Iowa in 1917 to make a home for herself and encounters some unexpected problems related to the war being fought in Europe.

Fourteen-year-old twin basketball stars Josh and Jordan wrestle with highs and lows on and off the court as their father ignores his declining health.

In winning a medal she is no longer there to receive, a tight-lipped little Polish girl teaches her classmates a lesson.

Seven-year-old Billy Miller starts second grade with a bump on his head and a lot of worries, but by the end of the year he has developed good relationships with his teacher, his little sister, and his parents and learned many important lessons.

In the New York City borough of Queens in 1996, three girls bond over their shared love of Tupac Shakur's music, as together they try to make sense of the unpredictable world in which they live.

With insight and a light touch, best-selling, Newbery Honor-winning author Gary D. Schmidt tells two poignant, linked stories: that of a grieving girl and a boy trying to escape his violent past. Following the death of her closest friend in summer 1968, Meryl Lee Kowalski goes off to St. Elene's Preparatory Academy for Girls, where she struggles to navigate the venerable boarding school's traditions and a social structure heavily weighted toward students...

"Gypsy Beaumont's magical savvy switches to its opposite when she learns that her mean and decidedly non-magical grandma has Alzheimer's and is going to move in with her family"-- Provided by publisher.

The adventures of seven-year-old Rufus Moffat, living with his widowed mother and older siblings including his encounter with an invisible piano player and his attempts at ventroliquism.