When her mother dies, fifteen-year-old Mari is desperate to avoid being caught up in the foster system....again. And to complicate matters, she is now the only one who can take care of her super-smart and on-the-spectrum nine-year-old stepbrother, Conor. Is there anyone Mari can trust to help them? Certainly not her mother's current boyfriend, Dennis. Not the doctors or her teachers, who would be obliged to call in social services. So in a desperate move, Mari takes Conor and sets out to find their estranged grandmother, hoping to throw themselves at the mercy of the only person who might take them in. On their way to New England, the duo experiences the snarls of LA traffic, the backroads of the Midwest, and a monumental stop in Missouri where they witness the solar eclipse, an event with which Conor is obsessed. Mari also learns about the inner workings of her stepbrother's mind and about her connections to him and to the world...and maybe even a little about her own place in...

Charlie and Tommy have big plans for Halloween. They're going to trick-or-treat and sleep over at Alex's house. But when Charlie finds out that the entertainment at the party will be the "Scariest Horror Movies Ever," he is struck by panic. Charlie loves candy, he loves sleepovers with his friends, but he absolutely hates horror movies.

When Charlie exaggerates about his dad's career and convinces his classmates that his dad would be the greatest Career Week speaker ever, what will happen if his dad actually does come and his friends find out the truth?When his classmates are boasting about their parents' jobs, Charlie gets carried away and leaves the impression that his accountant dad is not only the president of his company but also that he will hand out free calculators to everyone. With rumors flying around the school and expectations escalating, Charlie jumps the gun and tells his teacher Mrs. Burke that his dad can speak to their class during Career Week. Now Charlie has no choice. He has to get his dad to come in. But then, just before the big event Mr. Bumpers loses his job. Charlie is dumbfounded and devastated. How will he explain to his class? Will his dad still come in during Career Week? Fortunately, Mr. Bumpers has some very surprising plans of his own.This fun series for young readers from...

Shortly before school starts, Charlie Bumpers learns that he will be in Mrs. Burke's class. It doesn't matter that she's been named Teacher of the Year. He's still afraid of her. Last year when he was horsing around in the hall, he accidentally hit her in the head with his sneaker. (Don't ask.) How will he survive a year under a teacher who is just waiting for him to make another stupid mistake?

Charlie Bumpers has his heart set on playing the role of the evil Sorcerer in the fourth grade play. He's even got the laugh down pat: Mwa-ha-ha-ha! But his dreams of villainous stardom go up in smoke when he finds out that Mrs. Burke has cast him as the Nice Gnome! Determined to rectify this terrible injustice, Charlie concocts one plan after another, but nothing seems to work.To make matters worse, his dad has assigned chores to all the kids in the family and Charlie's job is walking Ginger - the diggiest, sniffiest, and poopiest dog in the universe. Can Charlie deal with these challenges without causing havoc all around him?

It's Thanksgiving in the Bumpers' household and Charlie's cousin Chip makes everything hard - gets him in trouble, ruins his things, and generally makes a nuisance of himself. On top of that, Mrs. Burke has assigned Charlie the task of writing what a family is to him. How will Charlie be able to see past his "turkey" of a cousin to understand the real meaning of family?

Life is an adventure for ten-year-old Darius Frobisher. His eccentric father Rudy sells insurance four days a week. The other three days he goes on exotic journeys. Then there is Darius's scatterbrained, much-loved babysitter Miss Hastings, who throws water balloons with him and makes delicious burned toast.But when his father flies off in a hot air balloon and doesn't come back, Darius's happy, carefree life suddenly comes to an end. He is torn away from Miss Hastings and sent to live with his notoriously nasty Aunt Ida, where he has to sleep alone in a cold, damp basement. Most of his waking time is spent trying to dodge the teenage boy next door, who is home from military school and hungry to do horrible things to someone younger than himself.Darius sees a ray of hope when he finds a rusty old bicycle in the basement and begins to repair it in secret. Could this be the first step toward a reunion with Miss Hastings? Then one day he is startled to see an old man...