Frances O'Roark Dowell

Because living with "modern-hippy" parents on a goat farm means fourteen-year-old Janie Gorman cannot have a normal high school life, she tries joining Jam Band, making friends with Monster, and spending time with elderly former civil rights workers.

When seven-year-old Sam Graham, eager for some spending money, volunteers to look after a neighbor's chickens, the experience inspires him to get his own chicken--a special bird named Helga.

Second-grader Sam Graham wants a cell phone to do research and share information but when his parents say no, he devises a new plan that starts a fad at school.

Sixth grade is a MOST confusing time. Best friends aren't friends anymore. Worst enemies suddenly want to be partners in crime. And classmates you thought you knew have all sorts of surprising stuff going on. The kids in Mrs. Herrera's class are dealing with all these things and more--specifically, three more: 1. There's a new girl who just seems to be spying on them all and scribbling things in a notebook. Maybe she IS a spy? 2. Someone is stealing...

Twelve-year-olds Kate and Marylin, friends since preschool, draw further apart as Marylin becomes involved in student government and cheerleading, while Kate wants to play guitar and write songs, and both develop unlikely friendships with other girls and boys.

"An instructional book on how to write a story from bestselling author Frances O'Roark Dowell"--

Fourth-grade science whiz Phineas MacGuire is forced to team up with the new boy in class on a science fair project, but the boy's quirky personality causes Phineas to wonder if they have any chance of winning.

In the segregated south of Kentucky in 1953, twelve-year-olds Callie, who is black, and Wendell, who is white, are brought together by an old dog that is clearly seeking something or someone, but they not only face prejudice, they find trouble at a haunted cabin in the woods.

Middle-schooler Isabelle Bean follows a mouse's squeak into a closet and falls into a parallel universe where the children believe she is the witch they have feared for years, finally come to devour them.

When accused of murder in her North Carolina mountain town in 1928, Dovey Coe, a stronged-willed twelve-year-old girl, comes to a new understanding of others, including her deaf brother.