Life is good for Jack. He’s a great photographer, he wins at handball, and time at home with his family is never boring. But when big George Hamel starts calling Jack “Butt Head,” school becomes a little less great. And when everyone starts calling him “Butt Head,” it gets outright dangerous.
Susanne Gervay’s thoughtful story sheds light on the contagious and destructive nature of school bullying, and the power of humor, love, and community to overcome it.
It starts out as a regular trip to the store with Mom, but then Lily does a dreadful thing: she flings her beloved stuffed toy, Bobbo, high in the air, only to have him land on top of a school bus just as it’s pulling away! Lily is inconsolable. What if she never sees Bobbo again? Little does she know (though the reader can see) that Bobbo is having an exciting adventure at school — and will be well cared for until he finds his way back to Lily. In her deft portrayal of a preschooler’s worries, Shirley Hughes offers a comforting peek into an appealing world to come.
Katla’s hopes of dodging unfinished business during her senior year are dashed by the arrival of two “Icelandic exchange students,” Marik and Jinky, who have come to collect Katla’s frail baby sister and take her to the water queen.
Josh Stephenson’s thirteenth year starts with a baffling sequence of events, including an odd gift from his estranged father, the arrival of his flirty seventeen-year-old female cousin, locker-room teasing about certain embarrassing anatomical changes, and wondering if dreams of love can ever come true.
All John cares about is setting the world record for knocking down dominoes and spending time with his best friends at school until his closest friend, Dom, is hospitalized, leaving John and the gang wondering what to do for him.
Sixteen-year-old Sarah sells her soul to reclaim her family’s estate and is given 100 years to atone for their sins, but as the bargain nears its end, modern-day Tom, yearning to attend the private school that Darkwater Hall has become, gets caught up in the bargain.
When a baby albino dolphin caught in old fishing netting washes ashore, Paralympics sailing hopeful Felix and English school girl Kara work with veterinarians and specialists to save and reunite the dolphin with her mother, setting off a chain of events that might just save the reef from the environmental effects of proposed dredging.
New fears for fourth-grader Calvin include a school bully named Tito and the return of his estranged father, rock star Little Johnny Coconut.
Lara Zany is her middle school’s official Friendship Matchmaker, but a new student, Emily Wong, has her own ideas on the subject and they vie to match two “hopeless cases” with their perfect best friend.
Kindergartner Yoko not only learns to write her letters and numbers in English, she shows her teacher and fellow students how to write their names using Japanese calligraphy.