In a scheme to reunite with her estranged biological mother, foster kid Jess joins a cosplay team working toward a competition in New York, but along the way she learns the value of the family you choose for yourself.

When Mike Mulligan and his steam shovel, Mary Ann, lose their jobs to the gasoline, electric, and diesel motor shovels, they go to a little country town where they find that one new job leads to another.

Katniss Everdeen's having survived the Hunger games twice makes her a target of the Capitol and President Snow, as well as a hero to the rebels who will succeed only if Katniss is willing to put aside her personal feelings of anger and distrust and serve as their pawn. She must accept responsibility for countless lives in order to change the course of the future of Panem. District 13 really does exist. There are rebels. There are new leaders. A revolution...

The noisy fifth grade boys of Laketon Elementary School challenge the equally loud fifth grade girls to a "no talking" contest.

"When the Emperor dies, the five royal houses of Etrusia attend the Call, where one of their own will be selected to compete for the throne"--

Jessie and Henry's robotics team is competing in a big tournament. But when their robot is stolen, the Aldens have a high-tech mystery to decode!

When seventh-grader Piper's father is hired by Chumley Prep, a school where every student seems to be the best at everything, she gets the chance to compete for the prestigious Excelsior Award.

Sixteen-year-old Katniss Everdeen accidentally becomes a contender in the annual Hunger Games, a grave competition hosted by the Capitol where young boys and girls are pitted against one another in a televised fight to the death.

Every generation, seven families select a champion to compete in a tournament to the death for control of high magick--the most powerful resource in the world--but this year, a salacious tell-all book draws reporters, tourists, and government agents to Ilvernath to watch the bloody curse unfold and some of the champions are determined to thwart their destinies and rewrite their stories.

"Mr. Lemoncello holds a contest for his young friends where they must race to bring interesting facts back to his library"--