Faced with the difficulties of growing up and choosing a religion, a twelve-year-old girl talks over her problems with her own private God.

Clara spends her summer visiting her grandma and cousin on Standing Rock reservation, where Clara and her family set up the ancestral tipi and grow closer together as they tell stories, sing songs, and learn about their Lakota roots.

Eleven-year-old Maggie Mayfield is an A-plus student with big plans for herself, but at this moment she is also facing a lot of problems--like starting middle school and figuring out how to help her father who is out of work and in a wheelchair.

While on vacation in the Caribbean, timid ten-year-old Pedro, who grows and shrinks depending on his emotions, gets lost and befriends Johnny, a gruff islander descended from pirates, who helps change Pedro's life.

Prettiest. Ugliest. It happens every year before homecoming - the list is posted all over school. Two girls are picked from each grade. One is named the prettiest , one the ugliest. The girls who aren't picked are quickly forgotten. The girls who are become the center of attention, and each reacts differently to the experience. Abby's joy at being named the prettiest is clouded by her sister's resentment. Danielle worries about how her boyfriend...

Sixteen-year-old Gemma, a British city-dweller, is abducted while on vacation with her parents and taken to the Australian outback, where she soon realizes that escape attempts are futile, and in time she learns that her captor is not as despicable as she first believed. While on a layover at Bangkok Airport, 16-year-old Gemma, the unknowing object of a long obsession, is kidnapped by Ty and stolen away to the Australian Outback.

Fifteen-year-old Tyrell, who is living in a Bronx homeless shelter with his spaced-out mother and his younger brother, tries to avoid temptation so he does not end up in jail like his father.

After moving to Baltimore and enrolling in a private school, high school senior Beatrice befriends a quiet loner with a troubled family history.

""When thirteen-year-olds Marcus, a supernatural matchmaker, and Lena Perris, a soul collector, kiss at a party on a dare, they soon realize their powers have swapped. Now logical-minded Lena finds herself with the love touch, and ultra-emotional Marcus has death at his fingertips--and setting things right has become a matter of love and death""--

Alice experiences the joys and embarrassments of seventh grade while advising her father and older brother on their love lives.