Hoping that if she wins a local beauty pageant her father will come home, Raymie practices twirling a baton and performing good deeds as she is drawn into an unlikely friendship with a drama queen and a saboteur.

When Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel, Mary Ann, lose their jobs to the gasoline, electric, and diesel motor shovels, they go to a little country town where they find that one new job leads to another.

Hazel Marie wants to raise money by throwing a beauty pageant. And is it possible that Miss Julia's first marriage might not be legitimate?

The Toro cheerleading squad has spirit, spunk, sass and a killer routine that's sure to land them the national championship trophy for the sixth year in a row. But for newly-elected team captain, Torrance, the Toros' road to cheer glory stumbles when she discovers their perfectly choreographed routines were stolen from a hot hip-hop squad across town. Now the squad must scramble to find a new routine to compete in this year's competition.

One pirate from the Atlantic Ocean and one from the Pacific Ocean meet and have a contest to see who is the best pirate in the world.

The noisy fifth grade boys of Laketon Elementary School challenge the equally loud fifth grade girls to a "no talking" contest.

Eden, Kentucky, is just another dying, bad-luck town, known only for the legend of E. Starling, the reclusive nineteenth-century author and illustrator who wrote "The Underland" -- and disappeared. Before she vanished, Starling House appeared. But everyone agrees that it's best to let the uncanny house and its last lonely heir, Arthur Starling go to rot ... Opal is a lot of things--orphan, high school dropout, full-time cynic and part-time cashier--but...

Three J has the opportunity to cheat in a contest to win a new bike and must decide what to do.

Drago the little dragon surprises his family when he enters a stunts flying competition with them, after taking flying lessons from a bird.

Winston and his friends enter an all-day puzzle contest to win fifty-thousand dollars for their school, but they must also figure out who is trying to keep them from winning. Puzzles for the reader to solve are included throughout the text.