Told in alternating voices, the teacher and students in room 117 find their lives changed over the course of a school year.

Middle-school drama queen Nikki Maxwell worries about asking a boy to her school's "sweetheart dance."

A series of poems describes all the baffling changes at home and at school in twelve-year-old Joylin's transition from tomboy basketball player to not-quite-girly girl.

Chase does not remember falling off the roof, in fact he does not remember anything about himself, and when he gets back to middle school he begins to learn who he was through the reactions of the other kids--trouble is, he really is not sure he likes theChase that is being revealed, but can he take the opportunity amnesia has provided and restart his life?

Twelve-year-old Fisher Bas, a science-loving bully magnet, clones himself, only to discover that his double is infinitely cooler than himself.

Flint Minett has keratoconus, an eye disease, but desperately wants to win a comic book art contest so that he and his new friend McKell Panganiban will be better accepted at middle school.

In 1958 Little Rock, Arkansas, painfully shy twelve-year-old Marlee sees her city and family divided over school integration, but her friendship with Liz, a new student, helps her find her voice and fight against racism.

Mia struggles to be nice to the new girl, Olivia Allen, after she makes pains to be nice and loans her some money only to discover that Olivia spends it to buy the exact same shoes for which Mia has been saving.

After his fight with Randy Betancourt makes headlines in the school paper, Big Nate has a problem worse than detention on his hands.

As Bridge makes her way through seventh grade on Manhattan's Upper West Side with her best friends, curvacious Em, crusader Tab, and a curious new friend--or more than friend--Sherm, she finds the answer she has been seeking since she barely survived an accident at age eight: "What is my purpose?"