Instead of a standard field day, Mrs. Walker leads her class through games and contests designed to teach the importance of teamwork and recognizing different abilities and skills in oneself and others.

Eva feels that rules are getting in the way of her fun at school. Will she discover that classrooms have rules for a reason?

Lizzie loves school almost more than anything. First she loved Nursery school. She loved Kindergarten even more. When the time comes for Lizzie to start First Grade, she can't wait. Everyone tells her it will be a whole year of school. And Miss Giggliano, the first-grade teacher, tells her class to make this the best year of school ever. Yippee! thinks Lizzie--a whole year of school! And what a year it is. Miss G.'s class wins the Centipede Reading Award. And they even win the Nature Study Award for their bee and butterfly garden. It's a great year! But all great things must come to an end. When the last day of school arrives, Lizzie is dismayed. How can this be? It was supposed to be a whole year! But good news soon arrives and Lizzie, along with Miss G., finds herself in a different classroom and eager to learn!

The author, a computer science professor diagnosed with terminal cancer, explores his life, the lessons that he has learned, how he has worked to achieve his childhood dreams, and the effect of his diagnosis on him and his family.

Featuring lyrical text and beautiful illustrations, this bedtime tale from Pulitzer Prize winner Jane Smiley and Caldecott Honor recipient Lauren Castillo evokes the splashy fun of the beach and the quietude of a moonlit night, with twenty yawns sprinkled in for children to discover and count. As her mom reads a bedtime story, Lucy drifts off. But later, she awakens in a dark, still room, and everything looks mysterious. How will she ever get back to sleep? -- Publisher.

Originally published in 1993. This book takes the reader inside the contested issue of sex education by examining how a sexuality curriculum is actually taught to a ninth-grade health class and how it impacts on both the teacher and students. Drawing on observations and interviews with teachers, students, and other school personnel to capture the complexity and tension of lived classroom culture, this volume illustrates the dynamic, complex, and sometimes contradictory processes by which traditional versions of appropriate sexual behaviour and gender relations are legitimated as well as contested. The book describes in detail the classroom knowledge that is produced by the interactions between gendered, raced and classed students and teacher, the planned curriculum, and the social organisation of the school and community. The book also tackles the broader issues of how sex education should be taught and even whether it should be taught at all.

Dead End in Norvelt is the winner of the 2012 Newbery Medal for the year's best contribution to children's literature and the Scott O'Dell Award for Historical Fiction! Melding the entirely true and the wildly fictional, Dead End in Norvelt is a novel about an incredible two months for a kid named Jack Gantos, whose plans for vacation excitement are shot down when he is "grounded for life" by his feuding parents, and whose nose spews bad blood at every little shock he gets. But plenty of excitement (and shocks) are coming Jack's way once his mom loans him out to help a fiesty old neighbor with a most unusual chore—typewriting obituaries filled with stories about the people who founded his utopian town. As one obituary leads to another, Jack is launced on a strange adventure involving molten wax, Eleanor Roosevelt, twisted promises, a homemade airplane, Girl Scout cookies, a man on a trike, a dancing plague, voices from the past, Hells Angels . . . and possibly murder. Endlessly surprising, this sly, sharp-edged narrative is the author at his very best, making readers laugh out loud at the most unexpected things in a dead-funny depiction of growing up in a slightly off-kilter place where the past is present, the present is confusing, and the future is completely up in the air.