When a new boy in his second grade class tries to get the other students to play a game that involves saying the meanest things possible to one another, Little Bill shows him a better way to make friends.
Charlie, a sixth-grader with a compulsion to tell lies, acquires a mysterious skull that forces its owner to tell only the truth, causing some awkward moments before he understands its power.
Junie, a spunky, sometimes exasperating, kindergartener, looks forward to winning lots of prizes at the school carnival, but a fruitcake was not exactly what she had in mind.
Through a misunderstanding, Junie B. thinks that her new baby brother is really a baby monkey, and her report of this news creates excitement and trouble in her kindergarten class.
Kek, an African refugee, is confronted by many strange things at the Minneapolis home of his aunt and cousin, as well as in his fifth-grade classroom, and longs for his missing mother, but finds comfort in the company of a cow and her
Six-year-old Ramona Quimby must cope with a scary new bedroom, a job that steals away her mother's attention, and an unsympathetic first grade teacher.