There may be no tidy solutions or pithy answers to life’s big challenges, but Michelle Obama believes that we can all locate and lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux. In The Light We Carry, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with listeners, considering the questions many of us wrestle with: How do we build enduring and honest relationships? How can we discover strength and community inside our differences? What tools do we use to address feelings of self-doubt or helplessness? What do we do when it all starts to feel like too much?

At the Nutcracker School of Ballet in Harlem, young dancers learn to chassé, plié, and jeté with their Sugar Plum Sisters--but things don't always go to plan! As the girls encounter challenges both on and off stage, they'll need the support of their classmates to carry them through with aplomb.

When Brianna Justice's hero, the famous celebrity Chef Miss Delicious, speaks at her school and traces her own success back to being president of her fifth-grade class, Brianna determines she must do the same. She just knows that becoming president of her class is the first step toward her own cupcake-baking empire! But when new student Jasmine Moon announces she is also running for president, Brianna learns that she may have more competition than she expected.

From Newbery Honor and Coretta Scott King Author Award winner Renée Watson comes the first book in a young middle grade series about Ryan Hart, a girl who is pure spirit, kindness and sunshine. Ryan Hart has a lot on her mind – school, self-image and especially family. Her dad finally has a new job, but money is tight. That means some changes, like selling their second car and moving into a new (old) house. But Ryan is a girl who knows how to make sunshine out of setbacks.

“Dyamonde Daniel was a gem waiting to be discovered. Just ask her.” With these opening lines, best-selling author Nikki Grimes introduces us to a new character kids are bound to love, a super smart third grader with wild-crazy hair and a can-do attitude. The thing is, Dyamonde has just moved to a new school, and she’s impatient for a best friend. Then Free shows up, and there’s an even newer kid in class who might also need a friend. Unfortunately, Free doesn’t want to be friends....

Stacey is a little girl who loves words more than anything. She loves reading them, sounding them out, and finding comfort in them when things are hard. But when her teacher chooses her to compete in the local spelling bee, she isn’t as excited as she thought she’d be. What if she messes up? Or worse, if she can’t bring herself to speak up, like sometimes happens when facing bullies at school? Stacey will learn that win or lose...her words are powerful, and sometimes perseverance is the most important word of all.

Being a kid can really stink. And no one knows this better than Greg Heffley, who finds himself thrust into middle school, where undersized weaklings share the hallways with kids who are taller, meaner, and already shaving. In Diary of a Wimpy Kid, author and illustrator Jeff Kinney introduces us to an unlikely hero. As Greg says in his diary: Just don't expect me to be all "Dear Diary" this and "Dear Diary" that. Luckily for us, what Greg Heffley says he won’t do and what he actually does are two very different things.

Twelve-year-old Shayla is allergic to trouble. All she wants to do is to follow the rules. (Oh, and she’d also like to make it through seventh grade with her best friendships intact, learn to run track, and have a cute boy see past her giant forehead.) But in junior high, it’s like all the rules have changed. Now she’s suddenly questioning who her best friends are and some people at school are saying she’s not black enough. Wait, what?

Chloe Silver has always been good at looking on the bright side. Even though her parents got divorced and she's moved to a new town, she knows that she will make great friends at her new school. So when she is assigned a science project with offbeat Lucy Tanaka and nerdy Theo Barnes, they have fun creating an experiment that tests out the laws of science through different acts of kindness... officially forming The Kindness Club.

He really just likes to liven things up at school -- and he's always had plenty of great ideas. When Nick learns some interesting information about how words are created, suddenly he's got the inspiration for his best plan ever: the frindle. Who says a pen has to be called a pen? Why not call it a frindle? Things begin innocently enough as Nick gets his friends to use the new word. Then other people in town start saying frindle. Soon the school is in an uproar, and Nick has become a local hero.

Everyone makes mistakes. But what happens when your mistake hurts someone else? Told in eight perspectives, Operation Frog Effect celebrates standing up and standing together and tells the unforgettable story of how eight very different kids take responsibility for their actions and unite for a cause in which they all believe.

Eleven-year-old Simon Barnes dreams of becoming a world-famous rapper that everyone calls Notorious D.O.G. But for now, he's just a Chicago fifth grader who's small for his age and afraid to use his voice. Simon prefers to lay low at school and at home, even though he's constantly spitting rhymes in his head. But when his new teacher assigns the class an oral presentation on something that affects their community, Simon must face his fears.

An amazing, miraculous refugee story of coming to America, the young readers edition of Tani Adewumi's story will inspire kids looking for true stories of doing hard things. At eight years old, Tani Adewumi, a refugee, won the 2019 New York State Chess Championship after playing the game for only a year - and while homeless. Tani and his family fled Boko Haram's reign of terror in Nigeria to come to the United States, where they lived in a New York City homeless shelter while waiting to be granted religious asylum.

Success is not born out of skill, school, where we’re from, who we know, or what we scored on the SAT. None of us were born ready. None of us started life knowing how to fly a plane or launch a company or knit a sweater for our dog. But we are born with something more important than skills. We’re born with optimism—the initial seed for success. Optimism fuels the belief that you can be the one to create the good the world needs. But you’ve got to hone it. And practice it. And determine to live from it.

Greg had started looking around the cafeteria, and everywhere he looked, he saw quarters. He saw kids trading quarters for ice-cream sandwiches and cupcakes and cookies at the dessert table. There were quarters all over the place, buckets of them. At that moment, Greg’s view of school changed completely and forever. School had suddenly become the most interesting place on the planet. Because young Greg Kenton had decided that school would be an excellent place to make his fortune.

Jasmine and Chelsea are best friends on a mission - they’re sick of the way women are treated even at their progressive NYC high school, so they decide to start a Women's Rights Club. They post their work online - poems, essays, videos of Chelsea performing her poetry, and Jasmine's response to the racial microaggressions she experiences - and soon go viral. But with such positive support, the club is also targeted by trolls. When things escalate, the principal shuts the club down. Not willing to be silenced, Jasmine and Chelsea will risk everything for their voices to be heard.

When her best friend and neighbor Margaret comes to her with a problem, Clementine goes to many lengths to help her friend. This sets off a rollicking adventure-filled week that finds Clementine getting into and out of further trouble, while learning valuable life lessons.

It all started the day Amy Anne Ollinger tried to check out her favorite book in the whole world, From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, from the school library. That's when Mrs. Jones, the librarian, told her the bad news: her favorite book was banned, all because a classmate's mom thought the book wasn't appropriate for kids to read. Amy Anne decides to fight back by starting a secret banned books library out of her locker.

With a dad who disappeared years ago and a mother who's a bit too busy to parent, Emmy is shipped off to Wellsworth, a prestigious boarding school in England, where she's sure she won't fit in. But then she finds a box of mysterious medallions in the attic of her home - medallions that belonged to her father...who may have gone to Wellsworth.

32 Third Graders and One Class Bunny is for anyone who has ever taught children -- or been to third grade. It is a testament to the kids who uplift us -- and the teachers we will never forget. With just the right mix of humor and wisdom, Done reveals the enduring promise of elementary school as a powerful antidote to the cynicism of our times.

From personalities and entertainers Kian Lawley and Jc Caylen comes a completely wild and entirely true account of their rise to Internet fame: Kian and Jc: Don't Try This at Home! More than seven million YouTube subscribers, five million Twitter followers, and five million Instagram followers cannot wait for this sometimes hilarious, sometimes awkward, and always crazy collection of stories and interviews narrated by Kian and Jc themselves.

What's it like to be undocumented? High school senior M.T. knows all too well. With graduation and an uncertain future looming, she must figure out how to grow up in the only country she's ever called home... a country in which she's "illegal". M.T. was born in Argentina and brought to America as a baby without any official papers. And as questions of college, work, and the future arise, M.T. will have to decide what exactly she wants for herself, knowing someone she loves will unavoidably pay the price for it.

Ally has been smart enough to fool a lot of smart people. Every time she lands in a new school, she is able to hide her inability to read by creating clever yet disruptive distractions. She is afraid to ask for help; after all, how can you cure dumb? However, her newest teacher Mr. Daniels sees the bright, creative kid underneath the trouble maker. With his help, Ally learns not to be so hard on herself and that dyslexia is nothing to be ashamed of.

My name is Chase Cooper, and I'm a 6th grade ninja. It's my first day at a different school and the only person I know is my cousin, Zoe (but she might be a little too cool for me). I was just another scrawny kid until a group of ninjas recruited me into their clan. It was a world of trouble I wasn't prepared for, which is why I kept this diary (or "chronicle" as my dad would call it) - to warn other kids about the dangers of becoming a ninja. They say history is destined to repeat itself...well, not if I can help it.

When Ari's mother died four years ago, she had two final wishes: that Ari and her older brother, Gage, would stay together always, and that Ari would go to Carter, the middle school for gifted students. So when eighteen-year-old Gage decided he could no longer live with their bossy guardian, Janna, Ari knew she had to go with him - even though she'd miss baking cookies with Janna and curling up to watch HGTV. What Ari didn't realize was that Gage didn't have an apartment yet.