Frank Carlson Library

Meet the Garbage Pail Kids-Adam Bomb, Babbling Brooke, Brainy Janey, Cranky Frankie, Handy Sandy, Junkfood John, Luke Puke, Nervous Rex, Rob Slob, and Wacky Jackie. You may think they're gross and weird and slobby and strange, but they're not bad kids-they just don't know any better. Even though they all live together in one big tumbledown house and have as much fun as they can while trying to survive Smellville Middle School, they are pretty "normal"...

For Merci Sur̀ez, eighth grade means a new haircut, nighttime football games, and an out-of-town overnight field trip. At home, it means more chores and keeping an eye on Lolo as his health worsens. It's a year filled with more responsibility and independence, but also with opportunities to reinvent herself. Merci has always been fine with not being one of the popular kids like Avery Sanders, who will probably be the soccer captain and is always...

"Merci Suárez knew that sixth grade would be different, but she had no idea just how different. For starters, Merci has never been like the other kids at her private school in Florida, because she and her older brother, Roli, are scholarship students. They don't have a big house or a fancy boat, and they have to do extra community service to make up for their free tuition. So when bossy Edna Santos sets her sights on the new boy who happens to be...

"Seventh graders Owen, Gemma, Ally, and Todd, who have nothing in common and barely know each other, must work together and follow the instructions of an anonymous blackmailer. None of them want to go along with the blackmailer's instructions, but each of them has a secret they must protect at all costs"--

"When five kids are invited to a cemetery at midnight, they think it's just a prank. When they find a gravestone that instructs them to dig up a grave, they think it's just a joke. It's no joke. An evil force is unleashed - a force that takes the shape of their worst fears. Once these fears are released, they won't go away. Not without a fight--"--

Led by new student Caitlyn, seventh-graders at a tiny rural school in Vermont create a reality-show inspired competition to determine who will replace the school's legendary class clown, Paulie Fink.--

Hope Roberts is a confident eleven-year-old girl who plans to be an astrophysicist, and who loves swimming, Galaxy Girl comic books, her best friend Sam, and her two rescue dogs (not necessarily in that order); but then she starts middle school, and suddenly she cannot seem to do anything right--even science club is a problem because she and another girl, Camilla, get stuck with the boring part of the science project that they suggested, but Hope...

In Muffuletta, being good at eating is the key to success. French fries and grilled cheese? Beginner food! Haggis and truffles? Delicacies! After failing a school eating test, picky eater Minerva is placed in the lowest eating track of all: Remedial Eating to Change Habits. RETCH class is full of kids with weird personalities and even weirder food preferences. And to make matters worse, Minerva's best friends, in the Gifted and Gourmet class, no longer...

Vanessa Jackson has style to spare and an amazing ability to rock any look. She's always had a flair for fashion and dreams of being a designer one day. She's loving middle school, and being on the newspaper staff with her two best friends is a blast. Vanessa knows her fashion advice is always on point for the group's popular advice column. But then she meets her new neighbor, Katie Kestler, who may give her some fashion competition. Katie is cute,...

Fourth 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...