eccentrics and eccentricities

Ten-year-old Jane Doe, the only student average enough to be excluded from the town of Remarkable's School for the Remarkably Gifted, is joined at her public school by the trouble-making Grimlet twins, who lead her on a series of adventures involving an out-of-control science fair project, a pirate captain on the run from a mutinous crew, a lonely dentist, and a newly constructed bell tower that endangers Remarkable's most beloved inhabitant--a skittish lake monster named Lucky.

The seventh graders of McQuarrie Middle School and their Star Wars-inspired Origami finger puppets go on a field trip to Washington, D.C., on what proves to be a very long trip full of shifting alliances, betrayals, carsickness, and sugar rushes.

After his mother dies, Jack Baker is sent to a boys' boarding home in Maine where he meets an unusual boy named Early Auden. Drawn to Early for reasons he can't explain, Jack joins him on a quest to find a legendary black bear in the nearby mountains, a quest that will test their friendship and reveal new truths about one another.

When The Walker, a mysterious boy who walks constantly, intervenes in an argument between Sandpiper and a boy she used to see, their lives become entwined in ways that change them both.

When his retired parents buy a group of tourist cabins on Cape Cod, fifteen-year-old Kenyon Baker's days are filled with repair work until he becomes friends with an eccentric girl and makes her the subject of a series of photographs.

While preparing for her participation in a wedding, adjusting to being a student at a school for the arts, and dealing with surprise visitors at home, twelve-year-old Olivia ventures into the New York City subway tunnels in search of a man who might help her friend Frannie.

Rose, nearly sixteen, is used to traveling around with her alcoholic father but connects with the people of a small, coastal Australian town, especially classmate Pearl and reclusive Edie, who teaches her to sew a magical dress for the Harvest Festival while a mystery unfolds around them.

Mike, a fourteen-year-old boy with a math learning disability, is sent to rural Pennsylvania for the summer to work on an engineering project, and while his plans to impress his mathematician father fall flat when Mike discovers the project has nothing to do with engineering, he learns much more valuable lessons while working with his eccentric, elderly aunt, a homeless man, and a punk rock girl as part of a town-wide effort to adopt a Romanian orphan.

Finding a rare zucchini-colored crayon leads twelve-year-old River Monroe and his friends on an adventure with their eccentric neighbor to save Earth from invading interstellar storm troopers.

When Katharine Tulman foils an attempt to kidnap her Uncle Tully, she finds herself caught up in international intrigue. Aware that there are people who want to turn her uncle's mechanical fish into an explosive device, and unsure of who to trust, she decides to fake her uncle's death and flee to Paris in search of Lane Moreau, her uncle's assistant.