With a key to the Oakes School in his possession, Benjamin, his friend Jill, and a new friend continue to seek ways to protect the school and their town, but Lyman, the janitor and a spy, has new tricks up his sleeve.

Sixth-grader Ben Pratt's life is full of changes that he does not like--his parents' separation and the plan to demolish his seaside school to build an amusement park--but when the school janitor gives him a tarnished coin with some old engravings and then dies, Ben is drawn into an effort to keep the school from being destroyed.

Twelve-year-old identical twins Jay and Ray have long resented that everyone treats them as one person, and so they hatch a plot to take advantage of a clerical error at their new school and pretend they are just one.

Benjamin Pratt and his friends Jill and Robert want to save their school from destruction! Just when it seems they've finally gotten the upper hand over that awful Janitor Lyman, they're caught off guard by his next move: Lyman has called in reinforcements, and now Benjamin, Jill, and Robert find themselves dodging not one evil janitor, but two. That's right: Lyman's got himself a partner. And it quickly becomes clear that Wally, the new guy, is even...

As letters flow back and forth--between the prairies of Illinois and the mountains of Afghanistan, across cultural and religious divides--sixth-grader Abby, ten-year-old Amira, and eleven-year-old Sadeed begin to speak and listen to each other.

Jake is determined to win the third grade science fair not only for the grand prize, but to beat the annoying class know-it-alls, as well.

Sixth-grader Alton Ziegler loves maps, and when his portfolio of secret maps is stolen, he begins getting notes with orders that he must obey to get the maps back but, with the help of a popular classmate, he just might succeed before his teacher, principal, or someone else learns he has been studying and mapping things about them.