Vashti believes that she cannot draw, but her art teacher's encouragement leads her to change her mind

"Marisol loves to paint. So when her teacher asks her to help make a mural for the school library, she can't wait to begin! But wait-how can Marisol ever make a sky without blue paint? After gazing out the bus window and watching from her porch as day turns into night, she closes her eyes and starts to dream"--

Rafael has looked forward to the Going Places contest and builds his go-cart from a kit in record time, but his neighbor, Maya, has a much more interesting and creative idea for her entry and Rafael decides to help

Poppy believes that all they need in life is love, but the Little One keeps coming up with other things that will make their life comfortable--until it is all swept away in a storm

SugarLoaf, named by her baker father and dentist mother, tells us about her family, her neighborhood, and what she likes to do. SugarLoaf is good at many things. Here's what she's best at: Talking baby talk to her little sister, waking her dad up in the morning, painting portraits, growing big-girl teeth. SugarLoaf's a very little girl with some very big ideas. Come play with her!

"When a young boy begins to play on his family's piano, reveling in the fun of plunking the keys, his father signs him up for lessons so that he can learn to play properly. With his father's encouragement, Raj learns notes, then scales, then songs, and finally classical pieces that his father can recognize and be proud of. But the more Raj practices and the more skilled he becomes, the less he enjoys playing, until he grows up and stops playing altogether....

It's no secret that Judy wants to be like Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman doctor, when she grows up. So when class 3T starts to study the Amazing Human Body, Judy can hardly wait to begin her better-than-best-ever third-grade projects: show and tell with something way rarer than a scab, a real-live, ooey-gooey operation, and a cloning experiment that may create double trouble for Judy and her friends

When Judy Moody gets serious about protecting the environment, her little brother, Stink, thinks she is overdoing it, but she manages to inspire her third grade class to undertake an award-winning, environment-saving project

Participating in a spelling bee in the hope of winning a trip to Washington, D.C., Judy finds herself depending on her lucky penny while tackling such challenges as a nemesis and a pot-bellied pig

A class visit to the Gross-Me-Out exhibit at the science museum inspires Stink Moody to create a variety of terrible smells to put on the sneakers he plans to enter in the World's Worst Super-Stinky Sneaker contest