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Sixth-grader Ben Pratt's life is full of changes that he does not like-his parents' separation and the plan to demolish his seaside school to build an amusement park-but when the school janitor gives him a tarnished coin with some old engravings and then dies.

Benjamin Bratt and his friend Jill, trying to keep their historic New England school from being torn down by theme park developers, are helped out by the widow of a former janitor who gives them a set of keys that leads to the discovery of a codicil to the will of the school's founder, Duncan Oakes.

With a key to the Oakes School in his possession, Benjamin, his friend Jill, and a new friend continue to seek ways to protect the school and their town but Lyman, the janitor and a spy, has new tricks up his sleeve.

As Benjamin Pratt and his friends Jill and Robert continue their efforts to save their school, they find themselves dodging two evil janitors, Lyman and Wally, but their team has also grown and now has a secret fund of millions of dollars.

In his very small town of Hamilton, Nebraska, fifth-grader Ted Hammond looks for a connection between the dying town's dwindling school numbers and the face in the window of the empty Anderson house.

Sixth-grader Alton Ziegler loves maps, and when his portfolio of secret maps is stolen, he begins getting notes with orders that he must obey to get the maps back but, with the help of a popular classmate, he just might succeed before his teacher, principal, or someone else learns he has been studying and mapping things about them.

The Keepers of the School and the evil janitors Lyman and Wally are at their final showdown--the school will either be a pile of rubble in the end, or the Keepers will have unlocked the secrets in the heart of the school and kept it standing.