In 1937, during the Depression, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice, initially apprehensive about leaving Chicago to spend a year with her fearsome, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois, gradually begins to better understand and admire her grandmother's unusual qualities.

Young Jethro Creighton grows from a boy to a man when he is left to take care of the family farm in Illinois during the difficult years of the Civil War.

A boy recounts his annual summer trips to rural Illinois with his sister during the Great Depression to visit their larger-than-life grandmother.

Told from two viewpoints, Derek Fitzpatrick, kicked out of boarding school, must move with his stepmother to her childhood home in Illinois, where he meets Ashtyn Parker, who may be able to achieve her dream of a football scholarship with bad boy Derek's help.

Having told off all of her old friends at her eleventh birthday party, Rissa starts middle school determined to make new friends while being herself, not simply being part of a "herd."

Julia Song and her friend Patrick want to team up to win a blue ribbon at the state fair, but they can't agree on the perfect project. ThenJulia's mother suggests they raise silkworms as she did years ago in Korea. The optimistic twosome quickly realizes that raising silkworms is a lot tougher than they thought. And Julia never suspected that she'd be discussing the fate of her and Patrick's project with Ms. Park, the author of this book!

When Cleo has a bout of carsickness on her way to a birthday swimming party, she is terribly embarrassed but her friend's mother helps her to forget the incident by encouraging Cleo to show off her talent for diving.

"Shortly after spontaneously morphing into a giant mutant dinosaur, 12-year-old Charlie Drinkwater discovers he's not the only creature in town"--

In 1966 Illinois, twelve-year-old Wilhelmina, convinced that she, her parents, and sisters are Abraham Lincoln's family reincarnated, determines to keep them from suffering the same fates, which is complicated when she and her father become involved in the civil rights movement.