Seven fifth-graders at Snow Hill School in Connecticut relate how their lives are changed for the better by "rookie teacher" Mr. Terupt.

Relates the adventures and misadventures of the four Moffat children living with their widowed mother in a yellow house on New Dollar Street in the small town of Cranbury, Connecticut.

Eleven-year-old Rigel Harman loves her life in off-the-grid Alaska. She hunts rabbits, takes correspondence classes, and doesn't mind not having electricity or running water. When her parents divorce, Rigel and her sisters have to move with their mom to the Connecticut suburbs to live with a grandmother they have never met. It is noisy, and crowded, and there is no real nature. Her only hope is a secret pact that she made with her father: If she can...

After eleven-year-old Abby discovers that she has a completely useless magical power, she finds herself at a magic camp where her hope of finding others like herself is realized, but when a select group is taken to a different camp, a sinister plot comes to light.