Gary Paulsen

While backpacking in the desert, thirteen-year-old Mark falls into a tube of blue light and is transported into a more primitive world, where he must use his knowledge and skills to survive.

Principal Wagner confidently deals with a faculty washroom crisis, a psychic parrot, and a terrorizing gerbil, but when sixty-five erasers go missing, he enlists the help of the school's best problem solver and locator of lost items, twelve-year-old LyleWilliams, aka Mudshark.

Having expanded his summer lawn mowing job into an ever-growing business conglomerate, a twelve-year-old boy gets involved in high finance thanks to his hippie stockbroker, takes on sponsorship of a boxer, and becomes a media sensation.

Fourteen-year-old Kevin is very good at lying and doing so makes life easier, but when he finds himself in big trouble with his friends, family, and teachers, he must find a way to end his lies forever.

As winter progresses, the strange man in the worn flight jacket dances frequently on the ice of the rink, expressing more with his movements than most people do with words, and twelve-year-olds Marsh and Willy try to learn his secret.

"'I'm the greatest family member you'll ever meet.' Kevin Spencer has a history of big ideas going completely awry. This time around, it's personal--suddenly he's kind of in charge of a double wedding in his backyard, and a whole tribe of wacky relativesis crowding him out of his own house"--

Ben and his twin classmates, Charlotte and Jacob, are missing a school field trip so Ben's father takes them, his new apprentice Brig, and the dogs on an adventure during which Ben manages to try out for a hockey academy against his parents' wishes and the twins turn the road trip into a learning experience.

Eager to enlist, fifteen-year-old Charley has a change of heart after experiencing both the physical horrors and mental anguish of Civil War combat.