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Jesse Aarons is in the 5th grade and has trained all summer to become the fastest runner in school.

Mourning the loss of his mother, nine-year-old David forms an unlikely friendship with independent, quirky thirteen-year-old Primrose, as the two help each other deal with what is missing in their lives.

Twelve-year-old Mitch, spending the summer with his grandparents at Bird Lake after his parents' separation, becomes friends with ten-year-old Spencer, who has returned with his family to the lake where his little brother drowned years earlier, and as the boys spend time together and their friendship grows, each of them begins to heal.

Eighth-grader Molly's ability to throw a knuckleball earns her a spot on the baseball team, which not only helps her feel connected to her recently deceased father, who loved baseball, it helps in other aspects of her life, as well.

After the death of her mother, Texas sixth-grader Lina's grades and mood drop as she watches her father lose himself more and more in books, while her best friend uses Lina as an excuse to secretly meet her boyfriend.

Thirteen-year-old Emmy, grieving over her mother who died of AIDS, resentful of having to live with her father and pregnant stepmother, and despairing about her future, finds hope at a summer camp for HIV-positive girls like herself.

Uprooted following the death of their father, nine-year-old Vinnie and her five-year-old brother, Mason, cope in different ways--one in silence--but both with the help of Lupe, the flip-flop girl.

When a new classmate stops speaking because of the sudden death of his mother, fifth grader Sam tries to befriend him and risks destroying his relationship with his best friend Alex.

Eleven-year-old Edwina confronts old and new challenges when her long-time best friend Sally faces the inevitable death of the grandmother who raised her.

Eleven-year-old Dessa Dean, mourning the death of her mother, finds an injured dog on her porch, which allows both Dessa and the dog to heal together with a friendship that shapes both of their lives.

While living with her Gram in Vermont, eleven-year-old Aubrey writes letters as a way of dealing with losing her father and sister in a car accident, and then being abandoned by her grief-stricken mother.

At her grandparents' North Carolina mountain home during the summer of 1963, grief-stricken after the death of her newborn sister and isolated by her mother's deepening depression, eleven-year-old Annie Winters finds comfort holding an oblong stone she calls her "rock baby" and befriends a reclusive mountain woman with a devastating secret.

Seventeen-year-old best friends Samantha and Juliana tell their stories in alternating chapters after Juliana is diagnosed with cancer.

Caitlin wrestles with her feelings of devastation and helplessness after her friend Ingrid commits suicide, and she turns to her family and newfound friends for help while encountering love, broadening her horizons, and using Ingrid's journal to heal.

In a small East Texas town largely ruled by prejudices and bullies, fourteen-year-old Austin sets out to win a ride in the next parade and, in the process, grows in her understanding of friendship and helps her widowed mother through her mourning.