Fiction

In Kalamazoo, Michigan, eight-year-old Derek Jeter, who dreams of playing for the New York Yankees, learns what it takes to be a champion on and off the field.

Zahra Khan is basically Bangladeshi royalty, but being a princess doesn’t pay the bills in Paterson, New Jersey. While Zahra’s plans for financial security this summer involve working long hours at Chai Ho and saving up for college writing courses, Amma is convinced that all Zahra needs is a “good match,” Jane Austen-style.

A yard sale, ice skating, class pictures, and a surprise party are a few of the things that make fourth grade fun for Julio and his friends, but they must get serious about studying as the statewide end-of-year test approaches.

Shrek meets Dork Diaries in this comic novel of a troll trying to figure out how to be more popular. It's not easy being Zarf. As a troll, he's stuck at the bottom of the middle school hierarchy, way below the prince and knights (populars), ogres and giants (jocks), and even the lowly minstrels (band geeks).

As a baby Minerva Mint was found in a travel bag in the waiting room of a London train station, together with the deed to a rundown mansion called Lizard Manor, and for nine years she has been living there with Geraldine Flopps, the former station custodian who found her--now, together with two new friends, she is determined to find her true identity.

When Kansas Bloom moves to California and joins the Media Club at school, he soon finds himself trying to outdo one of the other fourth-grade students in a "dare war" while vying for the job of on-air video homeroom announcer.

Lulu, a little mouse who lives in the Shubert Theatre on Broadway, wants to become an entertainer and thinks she's found a way to be a star when she befriends Jayne, a human cast member of the show currently running there.

Dexter's well-ordered life is disrupted by his uneasy interactions with his spontaneous, even zany, fourth-grade teacher Mr. Ditzwinkle and by his mother's campaign for reelection to the town's school board.

In 1986 Malaysia, as she worries about her parents' constant fighting, ardent soccer fan Maya, age eleven, trains herself and pulls together a team at her girls' school, despite soccer being a "boys' game."

An unlikely teacher takes over the disorderly fourth-grade class of Aesop Elementary School with surprising results.