Frances O'Roark Dowell

When twelve-year-old Jamie Dexter's brother joins the Army and is sent to Vietnam, Jamie is thrilled. SHe can't wait to get letters from the fornt lines describing the excitement of real-life combat: the sound of helicopters, the smell of gunpowder, the exhilaration of being right in the thick of it all.

A group of foster children build a home of their own.

Middle-schooler Isabelle Bean follows a mouse's squeak into a closet and falls into a parallel universe where the children believe she is the witch they have feared for years, finally come to devour them.

In a series of letters to her cousin, twelve-year-old Arie Mae relates her life in a mountain valley of North Carolina in the 1920s.

Told in a series of reports to his therapist, Hazard is resentful about being forced into counseling after being suspended from his school football team for unsportsmanlike conduct, angry that his father has served four tours of duty in Iraq and Afghanistan, angry that his father has lost a leg when an IED blew up--but as his therapy progresses he begins to process what has happened to him and his family, including his father's psychological trauma...

Fourth-grade science whiz Phineas MacGuire is forced to team up with the new boy in class on a science fair project, but the boy's quirky personality causes Phineas to wonder if they have any chance of winning.

Best friends Marylin and Kate compete for limited school resources when Kate helps her boyfriend seek funding for the Audio Lab, while Marylin covers her interest in the student body president by claiming she only wants his support for new cheerleading uniforms.

In the segregated south of Kentucky in 1953, twelve-year-olds Callie, who is black, and Wendell, who is white, are brought together by an old dog that is clearly seeking something or someone, but they not only face prejudice, they find trouble at a haunted cabin in the woods.

"A sixth-grade class comes together to support a classmate in need, each of them giving their own perspective on the goings on"--

Second-grader Sam Graham wants a cell phone to do research and share information but when his parents say no, he devises a new plan that starts a fad at school.