Twelve-year-old Quijana is a biracial girl, desperately trying to understand the changes that are going on in her life; her mother rarely gets home before bedtime, her father suddenly seems to be trying to get in touch with his Guatemalan roots (even though he never bothered to teach Quijana Spanish), she is about to start seventh grade in the Texas town where they live and she is worried about fitting in--and Quijana suspects that her parents are...

Danny Owens is dedicating his seventh-grade football season to his recently-deceased father, an NFL legend, but the pressure to succeed is magnified by his inability to read.

Jake Cullen, fourteen, lives in the shadows of his father and older brother until he becomes the starting quarterback for the high school football team and finally has his chance to shine.

During the summer of 1971 in a small Texas town, thirteen-year-old Toby and his best friend Cal meet the star of a sideshow act, 600-pound Zachary, the fattest boy in the world.

When Victoria Cruz wakes up in the psychiatric ward of a Texas hospital after her failed suicide attempt, she still has no desire to live, but as the weeks pass, and she meets Dr. Desai and three of the other patients, she begins to reflect on the reasons why she feels like a loser compared with the rest of her family, and to see a path ahead where she can make a life of her own.

Kylie Jean Carter plans to sing in the annual Fourth of July Jubilee talent show.

Eleven-year-old crafter Jubilee Johnson's assumptions about her vagabond life, her estranged mother, and her idol, television's perfect crafter Arletta Paisley, start to change after Jubi and her grandmother move to a small Texas town.

In central Texas in 1899, eleven-year-old Callie Vee Tate is instructed to be a lady by her mother, learns about love from the older three of her six brothers, and studies the natural world with her grandfather, the latter of which leads to an important discovery.

When Coach Coop, a former star player for the Dallas Cowboys, starts exhibiting side effects from the many concussions he suffered while playing professionally, twelve-year-old wide receiver Clay Hollis becomes determined to help him get through the football season until Thanksgiving, when Coach plans to attend a ceremony honoring him and his former Super Bowl-winning teammates.