"In one day, four lives weave together in unexpected ways. Virgil Salinas is shy and kindhearted and feels out of place in his crazy-about-sports family. Valencia Somerset, who is deaf, is smart, brave, and secretly lonely, and she loves everything about nature. Kaori Tanaka is a self-proclaimed psychic, whose little sister, Gen, is always following her around. And Chet Bullens wishes the weird kids would just stop being so different so he can concentrate...

"Twelve-year-old Lalani Sarita takes on the impossible task of traveling to the legendary Mount Isa, towering on an island to the north. Generations of men and boys have died on the same quest--how can a timid young girl in a tiny boat survive the epic tests of the archipelago?"--

Bullied at school, eighth-grader Apple, a Filipino American who loves the music of the Beatles, decides to change her life by learning how to play the guitar.

"Marisol, who has a big imagination and likes to name inanimate objects, has a tree in her backyard named Peppina...but she's way too scared to climb it. Will Marisol find the courage to climb Peppina? Maybe"--

"One of Marisol's least-favorite things is gym class--especially when Coach Decker announces that they will be playing kickball--so Marisol and her best friend Jada ask the best (and stinkiest) athlete they know--Marisol's big brother Oz--for help." --

When Ridge, a time-traveling teenager from the future, gets trapped in 1999, he befriends Michael, a lonely twelve-year-old boy, changing the course of their lives forever.