Ordinarily, no one would have imagined that Jack Rankin would vandalize a desk. But this was not an ordinary school year for Jack.... When Jack Rankin learns that he is going to spend the fifth grade in the old high school -- the building where his father works as a janitor -- he dreads the start of school. Jack manages to get through the first month without the kids catching on. Then comes the disastrous day when one of his classmates loses his lunch all over the floor. John the janitor is called in to clean up, and he does the unthinkable -- he turns to Jack with a big smile and says, "Hi, son." Jack performs an act of revenge and gets himself into a sticky situation. His punishment is to assist the janitor after school for three weeks. The work is tedious, not to mention humiliating. But there is one perk, janitors have access to keys, keys to secret places....

A collection of poems written by the author at the age of ten.

An office at night is reimagined as a fantastical kingdom of paper complete with friendly dragons in this own voices picture book. When the babysitter is unable to come, Daniel is woken out of bed and joins his parents as they head downtown for their jobs as nighttime office cleaners. But the story is about more than brooms, mops, and vacuums. Mama and Papa turn the deserted office building into a magnificent kingdom filled with paper. Then they weave a fantasy of dragons and kings to further engage their reluctant companion--and even encourage him to one day be the king of a paper kingdom. The Paper Kingdom expresses the joy and spirit of a loving family who turn a routine and ordinary experience into something much grander. Magical art by Pascal Campion shows both the real world and the fantasy through the eyes of the young narrator.

The Bureau of Educational Maintenance (BEM) is after Spencer, and the only place he is safe is within the walls of the New Forest Academy--or so he thinks.

“Hilarious. Barbara Park makes reading fun.” —Dav Pilkey, author of Dog Man Barbara Park’s #1 New York Times bestselling chapter book series, Junie B. Jones, has been keeping kids laughing—and reading—for more than twenty-five years. Over 65 million copies sold! Meet the World’s Funniest Kindergartner—Junie B. Jones! Junie B.’s having a rough week. First she got punishment for shooting off her mouth in kindergarten. And now she’s in big trouble again! ’Cause Monday is Job Day, and Junie B. told her class that she’s got the bestest job of all. Only, what the heck is it? USA Today: “Junie B. is the darling of the young-reader set.” Publishers Weekly: “Park convinces beginning readers that Junie B.—and reading—are lots of fun.” Kirkus Reviews: “Junie’s swarms of young fans will continue to delight in her unique take on the world. . . . A hilarious, first-rate read-aloud.” Time: “Junie B. Jones is a feisty six-year-old with an endearing penchant for honesty.”

The first in a six-book series, We the Children follows Ben, his tech-savvy friend, Jill, and the class know-it-all, Robert, as they uncover a remarkable history and use it to protect the school. Sixth grader Benjamin Pratt loves history, which makes going to the historic Duncan Oakes School a pretty cool thing. But a wave of commercialization is hitting the area and his beloved school is slated to be torn down to make room for an entertainment park. This would be most kids’ dream—except there’s more to the developers than meets the eye… and more to the school. Because weeks before the wrecking ball is due to strike, Ben finds an old leather pouch that contains a parchment scroll with a note three students wrote in 1791. The students call themselves the Keepers of the School, and it turns out they’re not the only secret group to have existed at Duncan Oakes.

Twelve-year-old Natalie has written a story her best friend says is good enough to publish. But how can two sixth graders conquer the tough world of children's publishing? Illustrations.

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

By turns heart-tugging and hilarious, Myron Uhlberg’s memoir tells the story of growing up as the hearing son of deaf parents—and his life in a world that he found unaccountably beautiful, even as he longed to escape it. “Does sound have rhythm?” my father asked. “Does it rise and fall like the ocean? Does it come and go like the wind?” Such were the kinds of questions that Myron Uhlberg’s deaf father asked him from earliest childhood, in his eternal quest to decipher, and to understand, the elusive nature of sound. Quite a challenge for a young boy, and one of many he would face. Uhlberg’s first language was American Sign Language, the first sign he learned: “I love you.” But his second language was spoken English—and no sooner did he learn it than he was called upon to act as his father’s ears and mouth in the stores and streets of the neighborhood beyond their silent apartment in Brooklyn. Resentful as he sometimes was of the heavy burdens heaped on his small shoulders, he nonetheless adored his parents, who passed on to him their own passionate engagement with life. These two remarkable people married and had children at the absolute bottom of the Great Depression—an expression of extraordinary optimism, and typical of the joy and resilience they were able to summon at even the darkest of times. From the beaches of Coney Island to Ebbets Field, where he watches his father’s hero Jackie Robinson play ball, from the branch library above the local Chinese restaurant where the odor of chow mein rose from the pages of the books he devoured to the hospital ward where he visits his polio-afflicted friend, this is a memoir filled with stories about growing up not just as the child of two deaf people but as a book-loving, mischief-making, tree-climbing kid during the remarkably eventful period that spanned the Depression, the War, and the early fifties. From the Hardcover edition.

An incident at school forces sixth grader Phil Morelli, a white boy, to become aware of racial discrimination and segregation, and to seriously consider if he himself is prejudiced.