junior high schools

"Danny Owens is dedicating his seventh-grade season to his Super Bowl champion father, who recently passed away. Danny promises everyone that, just like his dad, he'll dominate the big game at the end of the season and earn a spot on the high school varsity team. Then his English teacher catches him cheating on a test. Even though Danny can retake it, he knows there's no point. He can't read. And if Danny can't pass this class, he won't be eligible to play in the championship game that could unlock his future. While his resentment rises against the only person willing to help him win off the field, the pressure to succeed begins to weigh heavily on Danny's shoulders. Danny is being tested on every level now, and to pass, he may very well have to choose a different path from his father's"--Provided by publisher.

When seventh-grader Elle moves to a new town, she seizes the opportunity to reinvent herself and join the in-crowd, but soon she must choose between popularity and true friendship.

Seventh-grader Martin McLean has trouble expressing himself except at Mathletes competitions and, now, as a female impersonator but his first-ever drag show falls on the same night as an important Mathletes tournament.

In small-town Wicapi, Minnesota, in 1991, twelve-year-old Justin struggles to pick up the pieces of his life after the unexpected death of his father.

In small-town Wicapi, Minnesota, in 1991, twelve-year-old Justin struggles to pick up the pieces of his life after the unexpected death of his father.

While researching a rumored-to-be-haunted grave for a local history project, twelve-year-old Lincoln Crenshaw unearths some startling truths about his own family.

Tom has long dreamed of getting out of Blackwater, Pennsylvania, and going to college somewhere warm and sunny, but when a plague of meth addiction sweeps through town in 2001, ruining the lives of friends, teachers, and parents, he finds it difficult to leave.

Matt Stevens, an average middle schooler with a glib tongue and a knack for solving crimes, uncovers a mystery while working with "the organization," a mafia-like syndicate run by seventh-grader Vincent "Mr. Biggs" Biggio, specializing in forged hall passes, test-copying rings, black market candy selling, and taking out hits with water guns.

Seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood, stuck in Mrs. Baker's classroom during the 1967 school year while his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, learns much of value about the world in which he lives from the study of the plays of William Shakespeare.

Danny Owens is dedicating his seventh-grade football season to his recently-deceased father, an NFL legend, but the pressure to succeed is magnified by his inability to read.