A series of poems describes all the baffling changes at home and at school in twelve-year-old Joylin's transition from tomboy basketball player to not-quite-girly girl.

It happens to every parent. One day, you have a sweet son or daughter who loves to snuggle on the couch and who puts a smile on your face just by walking into the room. The next day, it's as if someone left the door open and let in an alien with a smart mouth and an attitude that, frankly, you could do without. Entering middle school is like stepping onto a different planet--for parent and child alike. It's a planet where peer pressure, social media, and hormones can wreak havoc in your child's life and in your relationship with him or her. But these years don't have to create chaos in your family. Parenting expert and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Kevin Leman's time-tested principles will aid parents in helping their middle schooler not only survive but thrive during these turbulent years on Planet Middle School. He shows parents how to - understand their child's rapidly expanding world - respond rather than react to emotional swings - tell their child about sex (before someone else tells them their version) - create opportunities for their child to practice selflessness and gratitude - ensure that their kid is one who loves home and family Middle schoolers can be a weird, unpredictable species. But with a little help from Dr. Leman, parents will be able to ride out the interstellar storm with humor and confidence.

Twelve-year-old Tad is a blogger with a plan, in the book Jon Stewart calls "hilarious to anyone who ever went through, is currently in, might go to, or flunked out of middle school." Tad has an agenda: Survive seventh grade. He also wants to: grow a mustache, get girls to notice him, and do a kickflip on his skateboard. But those are not the main reasons he started a blog. Tad just has a lot of important thoughts he wants to share with the world, like: Here is the first thing I have learned about having a dog in your house: Don't feed them nachos. Not ever. This highly illustrated and hilarious book is by the Emmy® Award-winning former head writer of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and is based on a column in MAD Magazine. Through a series of daily entries, readers are treated to a year in Tad's blog that will leave them in stitches. MAD Magazine and all related characters and elements are trademarks of and © E.C. Publications. (s14)

Written for primary PE teachers, health and PE directors, these ready-to-use lesson plans, reproducible work sheets and assessments, teach students how to develop healthy lifestyles, specifically increasing activity and improving dietary quality.

For Pluto, summer has always started with a trip to the planetarium. It’s the launch to her favorite season, which also includes visits to the boardwalk arcade, working in her mom’s pizzeria, and her best friend Meredith’s birthday party. But this summer, none of that feels possible. A month before the end of the school year, Pluto’s frightened mom broke down Pluto’s bedroom door. What came next were doctor’s appointments, a diagnosis of depression, and a big black hole that still sits on Pluto’s chest, making it too hard to do anything. Pluto can’t explain to her mom why she can’t do the things she used to love. And it isn’t until Pluto’s dad threatens to make her move with him to the city—where he believes his money, in particular, could help—that Pluto becomes desperate enough to do whatever it takes to be the old Pluto again. She develops a plan and a checklist: If she takes her medication, if she goes to the planetarium with her mom for her birthday, if she successfully finishes her summer school work with her tutor, if she goes to Meredith’s birthday party . . . if she does all the things that “normal” Pluto would do, she can stay with her mom in Jersey. But it takes a new therapist, a new tutor, and a new (and cute) friend with a checklist and plan of her own for Pluto to learn that there is no old and new Pluto. There’s just her.

*Now available in paperback with a brand new title: Kaboom Academy!* “Graduates of Wayside School will fit right in at the decidedly unconventional Kaboom Academy.” —Kirkus Reviews Forget everything you know about middle school while reading “this amusing and lighthearted story [that] pokes fun at traditional education, while celebrating nonconformity, individuality, and even oddity” (School Library Journal). A new middle school has just opened in Horsemouth, New Hampshire: Kaboom Academy. It’s a place where cannons go off in the middle of school assemblies, pills contain actual information, and multiplication is made, er, real. (Read: You ever wonder what it would be like if there were two of you? How about four? How about eight? Well, you’re about to find out!) The school’s new students—and the Journalism 1A class in particular—can’t believe all the shenanigans that go on. Who’s really in charge of this groundbreaking academy for boys and girls who’ve fallen out of love with learning? And what does it mean to “blow up the model for middle school”? A 2015 Children's Choice

"Tender and illuminating. A beautiful debut." --Rebecca Stead, Newbery Medal-winning author of When You Reach Me A heartrending and hopeful debut novel about a nonverbal girl and her passion for space exploration, for fans of See You in the Cosmos, Mockingbird, and The Thing About Jellyfish. Twelve-year-old Nova is eagerly awaiting the launch of the space shuttle Challenger--it's the first time a teacher is going into space, and kids across America will watch the event on live TV in their classrooms. Nova and her big sister, Bridget, share a love of astronomy and the space program. They planned to watch the launch together. But Bridget has disappeared, and Nova is in a new foster home. While foster families and teachers dismiss Nova as severely autistic and nonverbal, Bridget understands how intelligent and special Nova is, and all that she can't express. As the liftoff draws closer, Nova's new foster family and teachers begin to see her potential, and for the first time, she is making friends without Bridget. But every day, she's counting down to the launch, and to the moment when she'll see Bridget again. Because Bridget said, "No matter what, I'll be there. I promise."