After passing a series of mind-bending tests, four children are selected for a secret mission that requires them to go undercover at the Learning Institute for the Very Enlightened, where the only rule is that there are no rules.

Wanda Petronski, a Polish girl in a Connecticut school is ridiculed by her classmates for wearing the same faded blue dress every day. Wanda claims she has one hundred dresses at home, but everyone knows she doesn't and bullies her mercilessly. In winning a medal she is no longer there to receive, a tight-lipped little Polish girl teaches her classmates a lesson.

As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

Five further adventures of the two best friends as they share cookies, plant a garden, and test their bravery.

Supremely confident middle school student Nate Wright manages to make getting detention from every one of his teachers in the same day seem like an achievement.

When Liza and Jeremy run to their mother during a scary storm, she comforts them by telling them about the Invisible String, which connects people who love each other no matter where they are and means that they are never alone.

"For Harry's second year at Hogwarts, fresh torments and horrors arise, including an outrageously stuck-up new professor and a spirit who haunts the girls' bathroom. But then real trouble begins--someone is turning Hogwarts students to stone. Could it be Draco Malfoy, a more poisonous rival than ever? Could it possibly be Hagrid, whose mysterious past is finally told? Or could it be the one everyone at Hogwarts most suspects...Harry Potter himself?"--Back...

In 1943, during the German occupation of Denmark, ten-year-old Annemarie learns how to be brave and courageous when she helps shelter her Jewish friend from the Nazis.

When Charles and his friends find Lola stuck outside right before a rainstorm, they have a tough decision to make. They know the bulldog has a home, but isn't safe locked outside during the storm. Should they take the puppy with them or let her ride out the weather?

Rumpelstiltskin has taken over Fairy Tale Reform School, where Gilly's younger sister, Anna, has been sentenced, and Gilly must break in to save her.