With her kitten, Moisturizer, missing and having fought with her best friend, Margaret, eight-year-old Clementine finds it hard to concentrate on doing her best as her classmate's Friend of the Week.

Third-grader Clementine's school field trip to Plimoth Plantation leads to all kind of discoveries, from fourth grade eating rules to the source of the stink on the bus.

A freshman at MIT, seventeen-year-old Mei Lu tries to live up to her Taiwanese parents' expectations, but no amount of tradition, obligation, or guilt prevent her from hiding several truths--that she is a germaphobe who cannot become a doctor, she prefers dancing to biology, she decides to reconnect with her estranged older brother, and she is dating a Japanese boy.