Cora the mermaid is having trouble with spelling, but if she wants to stay on the swim team she has get an A on her next test--so her mother gives her a "magic" diary that compels her to practice writing, while her friends explain to her the concept of studying.

A girl looks at old photographs with her mother, trying to figure out what her mother feels most grateful for in her life

When thirteen-year-old Sherry is visited by the ghost of her mother asking Sherry to help solve a case involving rhinoceros poaching at the San Diego Wild Animal Park, Sherry's involvement not only helps save the rhinos, but it also brings mother and daughter closer together than ever before

Taking care of her younger brother and a loving but flighty mother has made Falcon very responsible for a eleven-year-old, but she needs the help of her great-great aunt, a friendly neighbor, and an ornithologist when she finds a unusual egg in Central Park

While pretending to be the heroine of her father's adventure novels, Tiernay discovers new friends, buried Revolutionary War treasure, and answers to a long-ago mystery

When thirteen-year-old Chrissa is sent to her paternal grandmother's farm, she learns more about her absent father and some of the reasons for her distant relationship with her mother

In Oregon, eleven-year-old Hope begins coping with her mother's verbal abuse by devising survival strategies for herself based on a history unit about the Holocaust, and meanwhile she works toward buying a pair of purple hiking boots by helping at a second-hand shop.

Still a teen in human years, Kandide is spoiled, vain, and the personification of perfection. She is also heir to the throne of Calabiyau and keeper of The Gift, the key to survival for all Fee. When her wing is crushed in an accident, her own mother casts her away to the Mists, a treacherous land where imperfects are sent to fend for themselves. Kandide must not only come to terms with her own internal repulsion at who she has become, but must learn...