Just before his thirteenth birthday, Jeremy Fink receives a keyless locked box--set aside by his father before his death five years earlier--that purportedly contains the meaning of life.

Rita tries to improve her times and flip turns as she struggles to decide whether to remain the best swimmer on the Dolphins team or the worst on the Sharks team, where she could be with her friends.

Left an orphan after the influenza epidemic in British East Africa in 1918, thirteen-year-old Rachel is tricked into assuming a deceased neighbor's identity to travel to England, where her only dream is to return to Africa and rebuild her parents' mission hospital.

From his first day, school had been torture for Gregory and it got progressively worse, until he was expelled in eighth grade, but through all his difficulties, Gregory could count on support from his grandfather, until his grandfather became ill and needed support from Gregory.