Arcadia Public Library

When seventh-grader Jake McQuade mistakes the world's first ingestible knowledge pills for jelly beans, he suddenly knows all about physics and geometry and can speak Swahili (though Spanish would be a lot more useful)--but his sort-of girlfriend Grace thinks they can use his new found brilliance to save their middle school from the new principal, who is conspiring to get it shut down.

When Miss Know-It-All's inbox overflows with pleas for guidance, Nikki Maxwell, the school newspaper advice columnist, turns to her best friends for help.

"Link, Michael, and Dana live in a quiet town. But it's woken up very quickly when someone sneaks into school and vandalizes it with a swastika. Nobody can believe it. How could such a symbol of hate end up in the middle of their school? Who would do such a thing? Because Michael was the first person to see it, he's the first suspect. Because Link is one of the most popular guys in school, everyone's looking to him to figure it out. And because Dana's...

"Turtle Alveston is a survivor. At fourteen, she roams the woods along the northern California coast. The creeks, tide pools, and rocky islands are her haunts and her hiding grounds, and she is known to wander for miles. But while her physical world is expansive, her personal one is small and treacherous: Turtle has grown up isolated since the death of her mother, in the thrall of her tortured and charismatic father, Martin. Her social existence is...

"Fifth-grader Sammy Hayes-Rodriguez struggles to fit in when his inventor mother requires him to take her latest creation, a robotic 'brother, ' to school with him to learn to become a student"--

Nikki's diary describes a frightful Halloween, on which she helps with her sister's ballet class party at the same time she is Brandon's date for their middle school Halloween dance, where she has promised to spend the evening with her two best friends.

Assigned to attend her archnemesis Mackenzie Hollister's new school for the student exchange week program, Nikki is surprised to learn that there are students at the school even meaner than Mackenzie.

Ghost. Lu. Patina. Sunny. Four kids from wildly different backgrounds with personalities that are explosive when they clash. But they are also four kids chosen for an elite middle school track team -- a team that could qualify them for the Junior Olympics if they can get their acts together. They all have a lot to lose, but they also have a lot to prove, not only to each other, but to themselves. Ghost has a crazy natural talent, but no formal training....