A suggestion from her mother leads Sophie to befriend the new girl at school and an elderly, grouchy woman, and helps her overcome the feeling that she is not good at anything.

"Ten-year-old Rupert, from a very large, very poor family, accidentally becomes part of an eccentric rich family's life beginning at Christmas, and soon sees that wealth is not everything." --

"While driving through Ohio in an old Pontiac, a young girl's Chinese immigrant parents spot watercress growing wild in a ditch by the side of the road. They stop the car, grabbing rusty scissors and an old paper bag, and the whole family wades into the mud to gather as much as they can. At first, she's embarrassed. Why can't her family just get food from the grocery store, like everyone else? But when her mother shares a bittersweet story of her...

"The voice actor for a hit animated series, thirteen-year-old Nikhil must find the courage to speak out about what's right when a group of conservative parents protest his openly gay status."--

Rising high school senior Maggie remembers little about the accidental death of her boyfriend, Joey, but as she slowly begins to recall that day at the gorge with their long-time friends, she realizes he was keeping some terrible secrets.

Twelve-year-olds Jack and Louisa tell, in their separate voices, of his reluctant departure from New York City and Broadway stardom to live in Shaker Heights, Ohio, where new neighbor Louisa, a "musical theater nerd," urges him to audition for the local theater's production of "Into the Woods."

"Seventeen-year-old Franny and her friends, The Ordinary, fill their time in traumatized Splendor, Ohio, filming their investigations of local legends for YouTube, but when they investigate a cosmic event, everything changes." --

As a slag heap, the result of strip mining, creeps closer to his house in the Ohio hills, fifteen-year-old M.C. is torn between trying to get his family away and fighting for the home they love.

"Piano-prodigy Isabella, eleven, whose black father and white mother struggle to share custody, never feels whole, especially as racial tensions affect her school, her parents both become engaged, and she and her stepbrother are stopped by police." --

In the wake of his father's sudden death, twelve-year-old Finn feels he is becoming invisible as his hair and skin become whiter by the day, and so he writes and illustrates a book to try to understand what is happening and to hold on to himself and his father.