While trying to find a new best friend after feuding with Rowley, middle-school slacker Greg Heffley is warned by older family members that adolescence is a time to act more responsibly and to think seriously about his future.

"Life was better in the old days. Or was it? That's the question Greg Heffley is asking as his town voluntarily unplugs and goes electronics-free. But modern life has its conveniences, and Greg isn't cut out for an old-fashioned world. With tension building inside and outside the Heffley home, will Greg find a way to survive?"--

The three members of the Finney family, including sixteen-year old Elena, her older brother Joaquin, and their alcoholic mother Caridad, must deal with their relationships with each other, their individual hopes and dreams, and family secrets.

Offered her longed-for opportunity to leave the RV caravan and study art, seventeen-year-old Dessa Rhodes questions whether she is ready to leave her family, the open road, and the boy she loves.

Loving life with his human parents, Louie becomes alarmed when his routine changes and double sets of new furniture and clothing begin showing up in his home as his mom's tummy gets bafflingly larger.

A young pioneer girl and her family celebrate Christmas in their cabin in the Wisconsin woods.

When Jules comes to see her after his return from the war, Ella finds it difficult to have some time alone with him.

All Sophie wants for her birthday is a pet giraffe, but as she tries to convince different members of her rather complicated family to support her cause, each tells her she is using too many words until she finally hits on the perfect one. Includes glossary.

A little pioneer girl and her family spend the winter in their log cabin in the Big Woods of Wisconsin.

A freshman at MIT, seventeen-year-old Mei Lu tries to live up to her Taiwanese parents' expectations, but no amount of tradition, obligation, or guilt prevent her from hiding several truths -- that she is a germaphobe who cannot become a doctor, she prefers dancing to biology, she decides to reconnect with her estranged older brother, and she is dating a Japanese boy. Can she find a way to be herself, before her web of lies unravels?