With insight and a light touch, best-selling, Newbery Honor-winning author Gary D. Schmidt tells two poignant, linked stories: that of a grieving girl and a boy trying to escape his violent past. Following the death of her closest friend in summer 1968, Meryl Lee Kowalski goes off to St. Elene's Preparatory Academy for Girls, where she struggles to navigate the venerable boarding school's traditions and a social structure heavily weighted toward students...

Sophomore Frankie starts dating senior Matthew Livingston, but when he refuses to talk about the all-male secret society that he and his friends belong to, Frankie infiltrates the society in order to enliven their mediocre pranks.

When boyfriend Elliott breaks up with Jenna Sakai before Christmas break, she just about convinces herself that relationships are for suckers and she is better off without them; but unfortunately she finds herself in competition with Elliott for a journalism scholarship, and worse her first assignment for the newspaper club is to write a personal essay, which is difficult when you are someone who prefers to keep your emotions bottled up--and than...

"When asking for consent, the answer will sometimes be no. This story validates the feelings of sadness, anger, and disappointment that accompany rejection and provides a model for young children about how to take responsibility for the actions after"-- "A story about accepting no for an answer and how to handle the feeling of rejection.Accepting no for an answer is a key foundation of consent. We Accept No builds children's social and emotional...

Ben Carver returns for the spring semester at the exclusive Natick School in Massachusetts determined to put his relationship with Rafe Goldberg behind him and concentrate on his grades and the award that will mean a full scholarship--but Rafe is still there, there is a girl named Hannah whom he meets in the library, and behind it all is his relationship with his distant, but demanding father.

In a small New Jersey beach town, twelve-year-old Polly Madassa, who speaks like a character in her two favorite novels, "Pride and Prejudice" and "Anne of Green Gables," spends the summer making deliveries for her parents' bakery and playing matchmaker, with disastrous results.

"Seventeen-year-old Pierce Oliviera knew by accepting the love of John Hayden, she'd be forced to live forever in the Underworld. But now her happiness and safety are threatened because the Furies have discovered that John has broken one of their strictest rules, and the only way to fix the balance is for someone to die"--

On vacation again together, three cousins share their family's beach house and find a whole new selection of boys--and the problems that go along with dating them.

"For the first time in his life, J.P. is in love, and it's making him do all sorts of weird things. Like using deodorant when he doesn't even smell, bumping into walls, and imagining he hears serenading violins. J.P. has even forgotten his obsession with chess, too caught up in pondering the beauty of Angela Patricia Galsworthy, a girl who has just moved to town from London and has the most charming British accent. J.P. will do anything to impress...

For fifteen-year-old Jean, life will never be the same now that she has been singled out for the attention of seventeen-year-old Johnny.