Eleven-year-old Cyrus knows he is not cut out to be a football hero or fireman like his adopted father, but it takes a skittish stray dog to teach him that he, too, can be brave.

From Raina Telgemeier, the #1 New York Times bestselling, multiple Eisner Award-winning author of Smile and Sisters! Callie loves theater. And while she would totally try out for her middle school's production of Moon over Mississippi, she can't really sing. Instead she's the set designer for the drama department's stage crew, and this year she's determined to create a set worthy of Broadway on a middle-school budget. But how can she, when she doesn't...

A Valentine's Day dance at Greg's middle school has turned his world upside down until an unexpected twist gives Greg a partner for the dance and leaves his best friend Rowley the odd man out.

Seventh-grader Georges adjusts to moving from a house to an apartment, his father's efforts to start a new business, his mother's extra shifts as a nurse, being picked on at school, and Safer, a boy who wants his help spying on another resident of their building.

Soon after her mother marries a man with three sons, sixth-grader Bea Embers fights to form a girls' soccer team at school, despite discrimination and setbacks.

Wheaton, Kansas seventh-grader Tucker MacBean loves comic books, so when his favorite comic has a contest to create a sidekick, he is hopeful that he can win, thereby fixing his struggling family.

Ten-year-old Auggie Pullman, who was born with extreme facial abnormalities and was not expected to survive, goes from being home-schooled to entering fifth grade at a private middle school in Manhattan, which entails enduring the taunting and fear of his classmates as he struggles to be seen as just another student.

Reading level: Ages 8 and up Seattle fourth-grader McKenna Brooks, who lives for gymnastics, struggles with school work until Josie, a tutor confined to a wheelchair, helps her with reading comprehension and much more.

From different perspectives, explores middle school bullying as Maggie, tired of Elizabeth Moon's superior attitude, creates a fake profile on a popular social networking site to teach Elizabeth a lesson.

Told in alternating voices, the teacher and students in room 117 find their lives changed over the course of a school year.