Claudia Mills

Kelsey is the best reader in her third grade class, and she is determined to lead her class to victory in the all-school reading contest.

Gus enjoys basketball practice, but the noise and pace of real games bother him, until his grandpa gives him some good advice.

Gus doesn't want to give up the training wheels on his bike, even for a new five-speed bicycle, until Grandpa helps him learn how to get along without them.

"Twelve-year-old Autumn wants more than anything to be a real author, but when she wins a contest by writing something too personal about her brother, she has to decide if her dreams are more important than their relationship"--

Nixie and Grace have been best and only friends since preschool, but now Nixie must attend an after-school cooking camp while Grace spends her afternoons with classmate Elyse.

Ethan Winfield has never been an academic or athletic star like his older brother, Peter. But, does that make him a failure? Of course not. Still, Ethan and his best friend, Julius Zimmerman, decide that they qualify to found an exclusive club: Losers, Inc. No sooner have they done this, however, than both boys fall in love with the new student teacher. Ethan knows right away that to impress Ms. Gunderson he has to excel. Instead of reading the shortest...

Amanda MacLeish might be the only student in Mr. Abrams's fifth-grade class who doesn't mind doing her homework. Now that her father has left home and moved into a motel, the only thing that brings Amanda any joy is writing her fictional diary entries about a young girl named Polly who lives amid the chaos of the Civil War. Polly would understand Amanda. With one brother fighting for the North and one fighting for the South, Polly knows just how it...

The sequel to Losers, Inc. Twelve-year-old Julius Zimmerman is the former vice president of the defunct organization Losers, Inc. Ethan Winfield, the former president, no longer feels like a loser. But Julius still does, maybe because his mother thinks of him that way. To "improve" him, Mrs. Zimmerman signs Julius up for a summer course in intensive French and for a part-time job baby-sitting three-year-old Edison Blue. She also sets a summer reading...

Cooper's grandfather gives him and his little sister, Carly, deeds to square inches of land in the Yukon. Carly uses them to invent her own imaginary kingdom of Inchland-far away from the silence of their home, where their single mother stays in bed all day. When their mom comes out of her season of sadness bursting with sometimes frightening energy, Carly retreats into Inchland, while sixth-grader Cooper tries to control the chaos. But can Cooper...

Maggie McIntosh is crazy about her biology teacher and loves to impress him with her academic excellence. But when, the dreaded day of the first class dissection arrives, Maggie has to disappoint Mr. O. There's no way she can cut up a worm. Maggie's best friend, Alycia, understands. Alycia is squeamish, too, and shares Maggie's moral outrage. However, she's willing to keep quiet and let her lab partner do the dirty work. Maggies' own lab partner,...