After fourteen-year-old Joey experiences her first kiss and learns that her best friend wants to quit competitive gymnastics, she considers giving up her dream of winning gold medals in order to have a normal life, even as her sister and assistant coach urge her to reach a new level.

In these four previously published stories Katie learns to cope with situations she finds unpleasant.

With still unnamed twin baby sisters at home, Bobby, owner of an boisterous pet beagle, is worried that his parents will have no time to celebrate Christmas.

In 1904, eleven-year-old Suzanna is delighted with her grandmother's invitation to spend time in Boston and thrilled to help her famous uncle investigate a series of arsons, but much less pleased to be enrolled in Miss Lydia Doucette's Academy for Young Ladies.

Red-haired Marvin is convinced that the reason he looks different from the rest of his family is that he is really the lost prince of Shampoon.

Embarrassed about gathering watercress from a roadside ditch, a girl learns to appreciate her Chinese heritage after learning why the plant is so important to her parents.

After flunking sixth-grade English, basketball prodigy Stanford Wong must struggle to pass his summer-school class, keep his failure a secret from his friends, and satisfy his academically demanding father.

Soon after moving to Noble's Green, Pennsylvania, twelve-year-old Daniel learns that his new friends have super powers that they will lose when they turn thirteen, unless he can use his brain power to protect them.

In 1866, Omakayas's son Chickadee is kidnapped by two ne'er-do-well brothers from his own tribe and must make a daring escape, forge unlikely friendships, and set out on an exciting and dangerous journey to get back home.

Twelve-year-old Elvis Babbitt has a head for the facts: she knows science proves yellow is the happiest color, she knows a healthy male giraffe weighs about 3,000 pounds, and she knows that the naked mole rat is the longest living rodent. She knows she should plan to grieve her mother, who has recently drowned while sleepwalking, for exactly eighteen months. But there are things Elvis doesn't yet know--like how to keep her sister Lizzie from poisoning...