Eleven-year-old Brooklyn girl Delphine feels overwhelmed with worries and responsibilities. Shes just started sixth grade and is self-conscious about being the tallest girl in the class, and nervous about her first school dance. Shes supposed to be watching her sisters, but Fern and Vonetta are hard to control. Her uncle Darnell is home from Vietnam and seems different. And her pa has a girlfriend. At least Delphine can write to her...

On his first day at Brooklyn's P.S. 858, fifth-grader Michael K. is teamed with two very strange students, and while he gradually comes to believe they are aliens who need his help, he has trouble convincing anyone else of the truth.

Fourteen-year-old Anthony "Antsy" Bonano learns about life, death, and a lot more when he tries to help a friend with a terminal illness feel hopeful about the future.

With a mysterious new principal and fifth-grade graduation fast approaching, will Michael K. and his friends be able to find the missing Brainwave before the chief of the Anti-Alien Agency uses it to destroy a planet?

Newly moved from California to Brooklyn after escaping a bad relationship, Angel feels out of sync with her new neighborhood. At school, she can't shake the feeling everyone knows what happened--and that it was her fault. The only place that makes sense is Ms. G's class, where classmates share their own stories of pain, joy, and fortitude. And as Angel becomes immersed in her revolutionary literature course, the words from novels like The Bluest Eye...

"Twelve-year-old Davis lives in an old brownstone with his mother and grandmother in Brooklyn. He loves people-watching in Prospect Park, visiting his mom in the bakery she owns, and listening to the biggest operas he can find as he walks everywhere. But Davis is having a difficult summer. As questions of sexuality begin to enter his mind, he worries people don't see him as anything other than "husky." To make matters worse, his best girlfriends are...