Adelaide explains to her teacher why bears make the best reading buddies.

Dragons are more than just fire and wings. They have outside interests like slides and swings. But can a dragon follow the rules and use proper playground manners at recess? With the help of her best friend she can!

Missy wants to take home the class pets, but another girl, Tiffany, has already asked their teacher so Missy and her friend Oscar need to come up with a plan to make Tiffany change her mind.

Imagined in the form of a secret agent's set of instructions, Mason and other children negotiate the first day of school.

Ravi has just moved to the United States from India and has always been at the top of his class; Joe has lived in the same town his whole life and has learning problems--but when their lives intersect in the first week of fifth grade they are brought together by a common enemy (the biggest bully in their class) and the need to take control of their lives.

Bertie is convinced that the grumpy school janitor is a vampire, but locking Mr. Grouch in a shed is probably not a good idea--and that is only the first trouble that Bertie finds in this trio of stories.

A sixth grader stumbles upon a secret that threatens to turn schoolchildren everywhere into mindless automatons.

Bertie finds trouble everywhere, and in this trio of adventures he has plans for his dog's fleas, locks a substitute teacher in the storeroom, and has an encounter with a fire engine.

In a story told in letters, when Claire's best friend moves away just before the start of fifth grade, Claire becomes the only girl in her tiny island elementary school--and suddenly boys she has been friends with her whole life turn into resentful, bullying strangers.

Fourth-grader Jim Nasium is trying out his hand at basketball, and he knows he is really good at one trick shot--but when he and his equally unskilled friends take on the school's more athletic kids he will have to do some quick thinking, or they will be completely embarrassed.