African American sixth-grader Kenny Wright wishes he was a famous superhero, but he's actually a regular kid who lives with his grandmother and struggles to fit in at his Washington, D.C. inner-city school. This year Kenny has to deal with a dilapidated school, a bully, and the potential loss of his favorite principal.
Hope Roberts is a confident eleven-year-old girl who plans to be an astrophysicist, and who loves swimming, Galaxy Girl comic books, her best friend Sam, and her two rescue dogs (not necessarily in that order); but then she starts middle school, and suddenly she cannot seem to do anything right--even science club is a problem because she and another girl, Camilla, get stuck with the boring part of the science project that they suggested, but Hope...
A follow-up to the Newbery Medal-winning Merci Suárez Changes Gears finds Merci embarking on a seventh grade year shaped by high teacher expectations, a crush on a school-store co-worker, and a bossy classmate's plan for the annual Heart Ball.
Merci Suárez knew that sixth grade would be different, but she had no idea just how different. For starters, Merci has never been like the other kids at her private school in Florida, because she and her older brother, Roli, are scholarship students. They don't have a big house or a fancy boat, and they have to do extra community service to make up for their free tuition. So when bossy Edna Santos sets her sights on the new boy who happens to be...
Locked in the science closet after hours by the cool girls who have rejected her, Riley escapes to discover that all the school doors are locked, the phones are dead, and the lights aren't working, and as she roams through the building seeking a way out, she starts to suspect that she isn't alone.
In desperate need of clear skies as she starts a new school, Madalyn has days filled with clouds that lead to serious storms until she learns the power of community and family after disaster strikes.
When sixth-grader Mac discovers several words of his classroom copy of Jane Yolen's 'The Devil's Arithmetic' are blacked out he is outraged, so he, his friends, and his eccentric family set out to do something about the censorship imposed by one teacher and the school board.
Best friends Isaac and Marco face various challenges in sixth grade, such as Isaac getting better grades, Marco winning a spot on the basketball team, and both seeing their efforts make a change in their respective family lives. They hope their friendship and support for one another will be enough to help them from falling short.
"Crushes. Humiliation. Drama. MIDDLE SCHOOL. This is the story of two totally different girls--quiet, shy, artistic Emmie and popular, outgoing, athletic Katie--and how their lives unexpectedly intersect one day, when an embarrassing note falls into the wrong hands. . . . All the crushes, humiliation, boredom, and drama of middle school are compressed into one surprising day." -- Back cover.
"A Indian American boy endures a family move from Hawaii to frigid Minnesota and, with the help of three life-changing books he reads in school, he learns to like reading, and ultimately, himself"--
David Bravo's first few days of middle school are hard enough because he doesn't have any classes with his best friend Antoine, but things go from bad to worse when he has to give a class presentation about his heritage which means telling everyone he is adopted and he injures Antoine in an accident at cross-country practice. After making a wish that he could do it all over, he summons a talking, shapeshifting, annoying dog named Fea, who tells him...
Green, a non-binary middle-schooler, comes into their own in no small part by fighting for gender-free casting in their school's production of The Wizard of Oz.
"It's Nimra Sharif's first time going to public school. Nimra's nervous, but as long as she has her best friend, Jenna, by her side, she figures she can take on just about anything. Unfortunately, middle school is hard. The teachers are mean, the schedule is confusing, and Jenna starts giving hijab-wearing Nimra the cold shoulder aorund the other kids. Desperate to fit in and save her friendship with Jenna, Nimra accepts an unlikely invitation to...
Eleni Klarstein has been friends with Sylvie Bank forever, but when Sylvie's end-of-summer birthday party also marks the end of their friendship, Leni feels lost. She doesn't know what went wrong, and she starts to think about other friendships that have come to an end. Leni tries to reconnect with her former friends to try to figure out what happened in hopes of winning Sylvie back, but she soon learns that sometimes relationships change and it's...
Sixth-graders Sara, a Pakistani American, and Elizabeth, a Jewish girl, connect in an after school cooking club and bond over food and their mothers' struggles to become United States citizens.
