K. A Holt

Told in text messages, middle-schooler Ava is having a really bad day. Her parents are getting divorced. She just has had a big argument with her two best friends. And she forgot to charge her phone ... again. To top it all off, while she's hiding out in the bathroom over lunch, the alarm goes off for a lockdown drill. Ava knows the rules. She has to get to a classroom, turn the ringer off on her phone, lock the door, and cover the windows. But all...

School and life have become much more difficult since Ben Y's older brother died, especially since the indefinable Ace seems determined to seek her out without clarifying what kind of relationship she wants; mostly Ben Y tries to cope with her situation by going to the chatroom and obsessively typing messages to her brother who is no longer there--but when she starts getting messages from the ghost in the machine (apparently) she finds that her deepest...

While under house arrest for one year for stealing a wallet, young Timothy keeps free-verse notes on his life in a court-ordered journal as he deals with having a sick brother and tries to stay out of trouble.

Follow a group of diverse kids trying to make sense of the world as they see it. Some questions have easy answers, but most questions just make us wonder.

"Levi just wants to be treated like a typical kid. As a baby, he had a serious disease that caused him respiratory issues. He's fine now, but his mom and overprotective brother still think of him as damaged, and his schoolmates see him as the same class clown he's always been. He feels stuck. So when his dad - divorced from his mom - suggests he take up boxing, he falls in love with the sport. And when he finds out about a school with a killer boxing...

Told in multiple voices, four summer school classmates band together to save their teacher and their academic futures after Ms J.'s unorthodox teaching methods are questioned.