Korman, Gordon

As they seem to be at the bottom of every prank at Macdonald Hall, the headmaster decides to separate roomates Bruno and Boots, but to little avail.

After unscrupulous collector S. Wendell Palomino cons him out of a valuable baseball card, sixth-grader Griffin Bing puts together a band of misfits to break into Palomino's heavily guarded store and steal the card back, planning to use the money to finance his father's failing invention, the Smart Pick fruit picker.

Eighth-grade football hero Wallace Wallace is sentenced to detention attending rehearsals of the school play where, in spite of himself, he becomes wrapped up in the production and begins to suggest changes that improve not only the play but his life as well.

Cap lives in isolation with his grandmother, a former hippie; but when she falls from a tree and breaks her hip, Cap is sent to a foster home where he has his first experience in a public school.

Told in different voices, on Centerlight Island, halfway between the United States and Canada, middle-schoolers Keenan and ZeeBee team up to seek gold rumored to be hidden there a famous gangster.