From her upside-down house, the eccentric Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle issues to parents her marvelous cures for such common children's diseases as Won't-Put-Away-Toys-itis, Answerbackism, and Fighter-Quarrelitis.

When he finds a lost beagle in the hills behind his West Virginia home, Marty tries to hide it from his family and the dog's real owner, a mean-spirited man known to shoot deer out of season and to mistreat his dogs.

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

While in a coma following an automobile accident that killed her parents and younger brother, seventeen-year-old Mia, a gifted cellist, weighs whether to live with her grief or join her family in death.

The adventures of five sisters growing up in a Jewish family in New York in the early twentieth century.

Even when his family teases him, a little boy persists in his belief that a plant will grow from the seed he planted.

Billy isn't one to back down from a bet. But this one is gross: If he eats fifteen worms in fifteen days, Alan will pay him fifty dollars. Billy takes the bet and tries worms smothered in ketchup, drowned in mustard, even breaded and fried. Worm by worm, Billy gets closer to victory. But Alan won't let him win that easily...

Ralph runs away looking for freedom but winds up a prisoner at a summer camp. The rousing notes of the bugle and the laughter and shouting increased the feeling of rebellion within Ralph. As the last strains of the bugle call hovered in the clear mountain air, Ralph made up his mind. He knew now what he was going to do. He was going to run away. Fed up with his timid mother and uncle and his squirmy little cousins, Ralph hops onto his toy motorcycle...

Wendell's refusal to clean up his room--which his mother has pronounced a pigsty--proves to be an irresistible invitation to a number of porcine visitors that even Wendell must admit are too messy.

As letters flow back and forth--between the prairies of Illinois and the mountains of Afghanistan, across cultural and religious divides--sixth-grader Abby, ten-year-old Amira, and eleven-year-old Sadeed begin to speak and listen to each other.