Fifth period is hands down the best time of day in Connor U. Eubanks Middle School, because that's when Mr. Lewis teaches Jazz Lab. So his students are devastated when their beloved teacher quits abruptly. Once they make a connection between budget cuts and Mr. Lewis's disappearance, they hatch a plan: stop the cuts, save their class. Soon, they become an unlikely band of crusaders, and their quest quickly snowballs into something much bigger--a movement...

"Twelve-year-old Jacky "Ha-Ha" Hart is a class clown with a penchant for pranking--and when she's required to act in the school play to appease her frustrated teachers, she must conquer her stutter"--

Eleven-year-old Rick Ramsey has generally gone along with everybody, just not making waves, even though he is increasingly uncomfortable with his father's jokes about girls, and his best friend's explicit talk about sex; but now in middle school he discovers the Rainbow Spectrum club, where kids of many genders and identities can express themselves--and maybe among them he can find new friends and discover his own identity, which may just be to opt...

Twelve-year-old Maxine Chen dreams of being a figure skating champion, but a remarkably talented new girl at the arena and a racist classmate at school test her resolve.

Babymouse's whiskers are in a twist! Literally. She tries out a new style--the twist--and now everyone wants to know her whisker secrets. When she posts a tutorial online, it immediately goes viral. Babymouse is officially a whisker influencer!

When thirteen-year-old David Greenberg's best friend makes the start of middle school even worse than he feared it could be, David becomes friends with Sophie, who shares his love of television shows and posts one of their skits on YouTube, making them wildly popular--online, at least.

Atticus "Atty" Peale fights for the rights of animals, copes with having a racially-mixed family in small-town Alabama, navigates the social scene of middle school, and determines to help her father prove Jethro Gersham innocent of murder.

McQuarrie Middle School's students miss Origami Yoda when Dwight leaves for Tippett Academy, but he sends Sara a paper Fortune Wookiee that seems to give advice just as good as Yoda's--even if, in the hands of girls, it seems preoccupied with romance.

Told in two voices, seventh-graders Essie, in North Carolina for just one semester, and Ollie, a non-binary, "gender weird" classmate, develop a gentle romance while Essie ponders her label.

"Indigo, an eighth-grade investigative reporter, is torn between fighting a racist school policy and keeping her friends--until she discovers a series of letters written by Black journalist and activist Ida B. Wells"