Andrew Clements

When he decides to turn his fifth grade teacher's love of the dictionary around on her, clever Nick Allen invents a new word and begins a chain of events that quickly moves beyond his control. Nicholas Allen has plenty of ideas. Who can forget the time he turned his third-grade classroom into a tropical island, or the times he fooled his teacher by chirping like a blackbird? But now Nick's in fifth grade, and it looks like his days as a troublemaker...

Twelve-year-old identical twins Jay and Ray have long resented that everyone treats them as one person, and so they hatch a plot to take advantage of a clerical error at their new school and pretend they are just one.

As letters flow back and forth--between the prairies of Illinois and the mountains of Afghanistan, across cultural and religious divides--sixth-grader Abby, ten-year-old Amira, and eleven-year-old Sadeed begin to speak and listen to each other.

After twelve-year-old Natalie writes a wonderful novel, her friend Zoe helps her devise a scheme to get it accepted at the publishing house where Natalie's mother works as an editor. Natalie uses a pseudonym to write her first book, and her friend, Zoe, pretends to be an agent. With a little help from an English teacher, the book exceeds everyone's expectations and becomes a bestseller!

As the end of sixth grade nears, Jordan Johnson, unhappy that she is only average in appearance, intelligence, and athletic ability, reveals her special skills when disaster strikes her central Illinois elementary school.

With a key to the Oakes School in his possession Benjamin, his friend Jill, and a new friend continue to seek ways to protect the school and their town but Lyman, the janitor and a spy, has new tricks up his sleeve.

As Benjamin Pratt and his friends Jill and Robert continue their efforts to save their school, they find themselves dodging two evil janitors, Lyman and Wally, but their team has also grown and now has a secret fund of millions of dollars.

A young woman and her husband are glad that they gave a stray kitten a home when it saves their lives by alerting them to a gas leak.