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 navigates a year filled with girl problems, school antics, and the worst summer job in history, all told in the form of hilarious, illustrated blog entries.

The second edition of Planet Health: An Interdisciplinary Curriculum for Teaching Middle School Nutrition and Physical Activity offers an innovative approach to teaching health education. You can use this proven, evidence-based curriculum to teach students about nutrition and physical activity while helping them build skills and competencies in language arts, math, science, social studies, and physical education. The curriculum is designed for use by teachers in core academic areas as well as in physical education and health. This new edition includes revised nutrition and physical activity information, ensuring that you're equipped with the most up-to-date science. The book also includes an all-new CD-ROM with plenty of reproducible worksheets, parent information and newsletters, school health resources, and other teacher resource materials. Like the popular first edition, Planet Health provides -35 complete, ready-to-use lesson plans and 31 microunits that promote healthy nutrition and activity; -materials and instructions to implement Power Down, a two-week campaign to reduce television and other media viewing time, which you can launch in the classroom or school-wide; and -FitCheck, a self-assessment tool to help students track and improve their activity levels. In addition, the book includes access to a Web site, which features a teacher training PowerPoint presentation, a Planet Heath FAQ, and more. Planet Health, Second Edition, encourages students to think holistically about how health behaviors are interrelated, and it offers a constructivist approach to teaching and learning. With this approach, you can build on your students' knowledge and experiences to create an active, inquiry-based, student-centered learning environment--one in which students learn best as they construct meaning for themselves. Developed by educators and scientists at the Harvard School of Public Health, Planet Health, Second Edition, is aligned with the Massachusetts Department of Education Curriculum Frameworks (learning standards) for health, language arts, math, science and technology, and history and social science, and it meets the standards in many other states. Every Planet Health lesson incorporates a range of language arts learning standards and engages students through discussion ideas for small or large groups in which they cooperatively learn and solve health-related issues. Active discussions are used to encourage higher-level thinking and cognition, and peer-group work fosters social development. This new edition of Planet Health is the perfect antidote to kids' inactivity, poor food choices, and high levels of screen-viewing time. Acquiring good habits regarding nutrition and physical activity in adolescence often carries over into adulthood. Help your students develop good habits now with Planet Health, Second Edition, and they'll have a better chance of growing into healthy adults.

"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."

Already a leader in New York's underground world of homeless children, Buddy Clark takes on the responsibility of protecting the overweight, emotionally disturbed friend with whom he has been playing hooky from eighth grade all semester.

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.