When social workers begin to scrutinize Mercy's homelife in modern-day Pietermartizburg, she uses life lessons taught to her by Mr. Singh to stand up for herself and her eccentric foster aunts.

"Mia Tang is at the top of her game! She's spending winter break with Mom, Lupe, Jason, and Hank in San Francisco's Chinatown! Rich with history and hilarious aunties and uncles, it's the place to find a great story--one she hopes to publish while attending journalism camp at the Tribune. But this trip has as many bumps as the hills of San Francisco... 1. Mia's camp is full of older kids, with famous relatives, fancy laptops, and major connections!...

When a kind and hardworking duck nearly collapses from overwork, while taking care of a farm because the owner is too lazy to do so, the rest of the animals get together and chase the farmer out of town.

Twelve-year-old Della Kelly of Maryville, North Carolina, tries to come to terms with her mother's mental illness while her father struggles to save the farm from a record-breaking drought.

Eleven-year-old Audrey Covington and her grandmother, a former famous actress, have a night out in Hollywood where they break the rules of Audrey's strict parents.

"At the front of a middle school classroom in Oklahoma, a boy named Khosrou (whom everyone calls "Daniel") stands, trying to tell a story. His story. But no one believes a word he says. To them he is a dark-skinned, hairy-armed boy with a big butt whose lunch smells funny; who makes things up and talks about poop too much. But Khosrou's stories, stretching back years, and decades, and centuries, are beautiful, and terrifying, from the moment his...

Ten-year-old (nearly eleven) Zara's nickname is "Queen of the Neighborhood" because she organizes the other children (even the older ones), sets the rules, and generally makes sure everyone has fun; but now another ten-year-old, Naomi, has moved in across the street and she has her own ideas about fun games, and suddenly the other kids (even Zara's younger brother Zayd) are listening to Naomi--if she is going to retain her influence Zara needs to...

"Sixteen-year-old Jo must decide whether to trust her estranged father or the grandparents who raised her but hid the truth about the way her mother died when Jo was only two"--

In 1972, Flora Smallwood, nine, copes with her parents' separation with the help of her friends, Yury and Nessie, a new pet, and the familiar routines of life in Rosetown, Indiana.

When eleven-year-old foster kid Mo finds a handmade cookbook filled with someone else's family recipes, she collects the stories behind them and builds a website to share them, secretly hoping a long-lost relative will find her and give her a family recipe all her own.