Types of Conflict Activity 3

Dante loves to skateboard, and he is good at it. He can grind rails, jump curbs, and land kickflips. But in the town of Bellwood, he has nowhere to ride. Every bench downtown has a metal sign bolted to it: NO SKATEBOARDING. Every ledge has steel knobs to prevent grinding. The fountain plaza is locked behind a fence at night. Skaters get seventy-five dollar tickets for the first offense and worse for the second. One lazy Saturday morning, Dante counts the signs. There are 214 of them. He asks if he can skate at the youth center. But everyone just shakes their heads. So Dante and his friends build a small ramp on an empty lot behind the antique mall. The owner, Mrs. Baptiste, gave Dante and his friends permission. But a week later, a notice appears on her fence. It is an order from the town that says that the ramp must come down. Dante decides that enough is enough. He signs up for a two-minute slot to speak at the spring town meeting. Can Dante make the case to legalize skating in Bellwood?

Todd lives in the fishing village of Gullhaven. Every family has a boat except his. Todd's family can't have a boat because they are cursed. You see, long ago, Todd's grandfather Orville refused to give the first fish of spring to the Salt King, the old spirit who lives at the bottom of the bay. This is an old custom, paying tribute to the Salt King. But Orville thought it was unfair and tried to skip out on the debt. However, since that day, Orville's family has been cursed. Every boat that they have built has sunk to the bottom of the sea on its first trip out. Todd wants to change this though. He has spent all winter building a boat of his own. On the night before the launch, Todd walks to the end of the dock. A tall figure made of green water rises from the bay, wearing a crown of shells. The waves bow down around it. Todd drops to his knees and promises that he will give the Salt King what is his. But the Salt King just laughs and the dock shakes. Can Todd settle a debt older than he is and break the family curse?

The year is 1875 and Matilda's family farms a claim on the Nebraska prairie. The wheat is almost ready to cut. The garden is Matilda's job and it has to feed her family all winter, so this is an important job. One hot summer morning, Matilda sees a strange cloud in the west. It glitters. It makes a sound like a prairie fire. Then the sky goes dark. The cloud is made of locusts, millions of them. They land on everything. They eat the wheat down to the dirt. They eat the leaves off the corn. They even eat the curtains in the farmhouse shed. Matilda throws quilts over the garden rows and the locusts eat the quilts. She lights smoky fires of wet straw and bangs a pan until her ears ring but the locusts keep coming. On the third morning, the only rows left are the potatoes, and they are safe under the ground for now. But she's going to have to harvest them for her family to eat. Can Matilda save enough of the garden to get her family through the winter?

Len's little brother, Nash, hit a baseball through Mr. Kettleman's greenhouse window. Nash was so scared that he cried and ran home. Nobody saw it happen except George Pace. George is fourteen and, coincidentally, he was filming the whole thing on his phone. The next day, George finds Len at the bus stop. He shows him the video. Then he tells him the price. Five dollars a week or the video goes to Mr. Kettleman. Len pays, but the next week the price is ten dollars. The week after that, George wants Len to do his math homework too. George smiles the whole time. Len is done paying George though. He and Nash have saved up enough money to buy Mr. Kettleman a new window. Now they are going to knock on his door and tell him the truth. But when they get there, they see George talking to Mr. Kettleman. Is it too late for Len and Nash to tell the truth?

It is Hannah's third day at Camp Tamarack and she has cried into her pillow two nights in a row. Before she left home, she and Mom made a deal. If Hannah calls the camp office by seven o'clock on Wednesday, Dad will drive up and get her in the morning. Today is Wednesday. The clock in the dining hall says 6:50. Hannah likes many things about the camp. Her bunkmates are nice. Her counselor, Jess, taught her how to paddle a canoe. And on Friday, the whole cabin goes on an overnight canoe trip to Eagle Island. Hannah has wanted to see Eagle Island ever since her big brother came home with stories about it. But Hannah also misses home. She wants her own bed, her own dog, and her mom's pancakes. Now Hannah is standing outside the office with her hand on the door. Part of her has already packed her bag. Part of her is already headed to Eagle Island. Which way will Hannah go?

Lily is babysitting for the first time. She is in charge of Teddy, who is two years old. His parents leave with one instruction. Teddy must be in his crib by eight. But Teddy has other plans. At 7:30 Lily reads him a story and lays him down in his crib. But two minutes later, Teddy is standing in the hallway. He knows how to climb out of his crib. So Lily chases him around a bit and then puts him back. But he climbs out again. He hides behind the curtains. He unrolls a whole roll of toilet paper down the stairs. He turns on every light in the house. He says "More!" and holds up the same book for the fourth time. He giggles from inside the closet. Every time Lily gets him down, he pops back up like a jack-in-the-box. Eight o'clock comes and goes. So does 8:30. Teddy is not even yawning. His parents will be home at nine. Can Lily get Teddy to sleep before their headlights hit the driveway?

The year is 1905. Grandpa Cyrus has just bought the first motorcar in Cedar Bend. It is a bright red Sparrow Runabout, and it can go thirty miles an hour. On Sunday, Grandpa takes Henry for a drive. Suddenly, a goat wanders into the road. Grandpa stops the Sparrow and climbs down to shoo it away. He tells Henry to hold the throttle lever right where it is. But the lever slips forward under Henry's hand and sticks there. The Sparrow lurches ahead with Henry alone at the wheel. He pulls the lever back, but it will not budge. He yanks the brake handle, but it only squeals. Main Street runs downhill. Henry steers around Mrs. Tully's chickens. He swerves past the church picnic tables. He misses a mule cart by inches. People shout and dive out of the way. Grandpa is running behind, waving his hat. Ahead, the road ends at the covered bridge and the river. Can they stop the Sparrow before it reaches the water?

At Ridgeview Middle School, the first week of school is called Bag Week. Every sixth grader has to carry an eighth grader's backpack between classes. Sixth graders eat lunch standing up. If an eighth grader says "Sing," a sixth grader has to sing the school song right there in the hall. Everybody says it is harmless fun. Cody's big brother Wade did it. Cody's mom did it. Even the principal, Mr. Boswell, did it back in 1989, and there is a photo of him carrying a bag in the trophy case. On the first morning, an eighth grader named Trey drops a backpack at Cody's feet. Cody leaves it on the floor and walks to class. By lunch, the whole school knows. The eighth graders glare at him. The teachers tell him to be a good sport. Even his friend Mia says that he is making things worse for all of the sixth graders. But Cody feels that this tradition has gone on too long, and it's his responsibility to stand up. So he starts talking to every sixth grader he can find. His plan is simple. On Friday morning, not one backpack gets picked up. Can one sixth grader resist a practice that the whole school supports?

All last year Farrah and her Grandpa Bob built a wooden rowboat in his garage. They planned to launch it on Loon Lake on the first day of summer. But on a Monday morning in March, Grandpa Bob passed away from a heart attack. Now the boat sits on its stand, finished except for one last plank. That plank is already cut and sanded. Grandpa's pencil marks are still on the wood. His coffee mug is still on the workbench. Farrah's mom says there is no hurry. Mr. Varga from next door says he will hold the clamps whenever Farrah is ready. Every Saturday Farrah picks up the hammer. Then she sets it back down. Part of her wants to row across the lake just like they planned. Part of her feels that as long as the boat is not finished, she and Grandpa are still building it together. The first day of summer is one week away. Will Farrah finish what she and Grandpa Bob started?

Brooke and her mom are spending the weekend at the family cabin in the mountains. A big snowstorm is coming tonight, so Mom drives down to town for groceries. She will be back in an hour. Brooke stays behind to bring in firewood. She steps outside in her socks and leaves the kitchen door open behind her. When she turns around with an armload of logs, her heart stops. A black bear is squeezing through the doorway. It is following the smell of the brownies cooling on the counter. Brooke's coat, boots, and phone are all inside. The bear eats the brownies in two bites. Then it pulls open the fridge and starts on a block of cheese. Brooke remembers what a park ranger once told her. Never get close to a bear. So she bangs two logs together and shouts as loud as she can. The bear looks up, sniffs, and goes back to eating. Brooke runs around the cabin and props open the back door so the bear has a way out. Still, the bear will not leave. The first flakes of snow begin to fall, and Brooke's toes are going numb. Can she get the bear out of the cabin before the storm hits?

In the village of Briar Hill, people say a strange market appears behind the old mill for three nights every fall. The sellers at the market are goblins. On the first night, Elsa's little brother, Charlie, snuck out to see it for himself. He came home at sunrise with a golden kite that flies with no wind at all. But he traded his name for it! Now nobody remembers Charlie. At the bus stop, his best friend walks right past him. His teacher calls attendance and skips right over him. Only Elsa still remembers her brother. But even she is starting to forget. Tonight is the last night of the market. Elsa walks behind the old mill with a lantern. The goblins' stalls sell jars of thunder and bottles of moonlight. At the very last stall, a snarling goblin holds up a silver tag with Charlie's name on it. "Everything has a price," it says with a grin. Can Elsa win back her brother's name before the market vanishes at dawn?

Jake's Uncle Bud owns a farm and a huge drone called the Hornet. The Hornet is as big as a kitchen table. It sprays the fields so that Uncle Bud can handle other tasks. Jake has been learning to fly it all summer. Today Uncle Bud lets Jake spray the last field by himself. Everything goes fine until the controller screen flashes two words: SIGNAL LOST. The Hornet does not land. It climbs higher. Then it turns east and flies away from the farm. Jake knows exactly where it is going. Last week Uncle Bud showed off the Hornet at the fairgrounds. The Hornet must think the fairgrounds are home. But the county fair opens today and thousands of people are there. The Hornet's tank is full of fertilizer that smells like dead fish. Jake mashes every button on the controller. The screen stays dark. He jumps on his bike and chases the drone down the road. The battery reads twelve percent. When it hits zero, the Hornet will drop wherever it is. Can Jake stop the Hornet before something terrible happens?

Danny has collected baseball cards since he was six years old. For years, he has dreamed about one card more than any other: the rookie card of Hammer Briggs, the greatest home run hitter of all time. On Saturday, his neighbor, Mr. Kowalski, holds a garage sale. He is moving to a tiny apartment across town and he is selling almost everything he owns. At the end of one table sits a shoebox with a sign that says FREE. It is full of old baseball cards. Danny carries the box home and starts sorting. Near the bottom, he finds it. It is the Hammer Briggs rookie card and it is in very good shape. Danny looks it up online. Cards like this one sell for around four thousand dollars. Mr. Kowalski must not have known. Danny got the card fair and square. It was free! Of course Danny wants to keep the card that he has dreamed about for years. But he also wants to be fair to Mr. Kowalski. The moving truck comes tomorrow morning. Will Danny keep the card or tell Mr. Kowalski the truth?

Every winter Riley builds the best snow fort on Linden Street. This year the Mulligan twins from the next block knocked it down on the very first day. Riley rebuilt it taller and sprayed the walls with the garden hose until they froze into ice. But the twins came back with garden tools and shattered the walls. Then they stuck a cardboard sign in Riley's front yard. It said MULLIGAN TERRITORY. That was the last straw. Riley gathered every kid on his block, even the kindergartners, and they made secret snowball stashes. Now the twins are planning another raid. Who will hold the fort when the sun goes down?

It has rained in Florida for a whole week. The ground is as wet as a sponge. This morning, Jamal waits at the bus stop at the end of his street. Suddenly, the road groans under his feet. A crack snakes across the road. Then the street sinks and falls away. A sinkhole opens up wider than a car. Muddy water spins at the bottom. The sides keep falling in and moving closer to the bus stop. Jamal jumps back onto Mrs. Murphy's lawn. He yells for her to call 911. Then he hears a sound he knows. The school bus is coming around the bend with forty kids on board. The driver cannot see the hole because of the curve. By the time the driver sees it, it may be too late. Jamal pulls off his red raincoat and runs across the grass toward the bend. He waves it over his head like a flag. Behind him, more road breaks off and splashes into the muddy water. Can Jamal warn the driver in time?

In 1962 a boy named Hops Doyle jumped higher than anyone at Lakeview High. His record has lasted for more than sixty years. His picture still hangs above the gym doors. People say Hops still haunts the old gym. Now Malcolm is one jump away from beating the record. But each time Malcolm gets close, odd things happen. The lights blink. A cold wind moves through the gym, even though all the windows are shut. He finds frost on the floor in the warm gym. Then Malcolm saw him. A pale boy in an old track suit sitting in the top row of the stands. He looked just like the boy in the picture. When Malcolm blinked, the boy was gone. The big meet is Saturday night in the old gym, and Malcolm will have three tries to beat the record. Will Malcolm break the record, or will Hops Doyle's ghost keep it forever?

Dante loves to skateboard and he is darn good at it. He can grind rails, jump curbs, and land kickflips without even thinking about it, like a bird flies. But in the town of Bellwood, he has nowhere to ride. Every bench downtown has a metal sign bolted to it that reads NO SKATEBOARDING. Every ledge and planter has steel knobs to prevent grinding across it. The fountain plaza is locked behind a fence at night, and anyone caught skating there gets a seventy-five dollar ticket for the first offense and worse for the second. One lazy Saturday morning, Dante walks the whole downtown and counts the signs. There are 214 of them. He asks if he can skate at the youth center and the parks office, but everyone just shakes their heads and points him somewhere else. So Dante and his friends build a small ramp on an empty lot behind the antique mall. The owner, Mrs. Baptiste, gave them permission and even helped haul the lumber. But a week later, a notice appears on her fence. It is an order from the town that says that the ramp must come down or the owner will be fined daily. Dante decides that enough is enough. He signs up for two minutes to speak at the spring town meeting. Can Dante make the case to legalize skating in Bellwood?

Todd lives in the fishing village of Gullhaven, where every family has a boat except his. Todd's family can't have a boat because they are cursed. You see, long ago, Todd's grandfather Orville refused to give the first fish of spring to the Salt King, the ancient spirit who commands the bottom of the bay. This is an old custom, paying tribute to the Salt King, but Orville thought it was unfair and tried to skip out on the debt. However, since that day, every boat the family has built has sunk to the bottom of the sea on its very first trip out. Todd wants to change this. He has spent all winter building a boat of his own, plank by plank, because he intends to break the family curse. On the night before the launch, Todd walks to the end of the dock, where a tall figure made of green water rises out of the bay, wearing a crown of broken shells. The waves bow down around the royal specter. Todd drops to his knees and promises that he will give the Salt King what is owed, but the Salt King just laughs until the dock shakes. Can Todd settle a debt older than he is and break the family curse?

The year is 1875 and Matilda's family farms a homestead claim on the Nebraska prairie. The wheat is nearly ready to cut and the garden is nearly ripe too. Matilda's job is to harvest the garden crops, which feed her family through the long winter, so this is an important job. One hot summer morning, Matilda notices a strange cloud in the west. It glitters as it moves and it makes a rushing sound like a prairie fire. Then the sky goes dark. The cloud has turned into an endless swarm of locusts, millions upon millions of them. They land on everything and cover the ground an inch deep. They strip the wheat down to the dirt and the corn down to bare stalks. They chew up the curtains in the farmhouse shed as well as any other edible material. Matilda throws quilts and bedsheets over her garden rows, but the locusts eat the quilts. She lights smoky fires of wet straw and bangs a tin pan until her ears ring, but the insects keep coming. On the third morning, the only rows left in the garden are the potatoes, and they are safe under the ground for now, but Matilda will have to harvest them for her family to eat. Can she save enough of the garden to get her family through the winter?

Len's little brother, Nash, hit a baseball through Mr. Kettleman's greenhouse window. Nash was so scared that he burst into tears and ran home, and nobody saw it happen except George Pace. George is fourteen and, coincidentally, he was filming the whole thing on his phone. The next morning, George finds Len at the bus stop, shows him the video, and then tells him the price: five dollars a week or the video goes to Mr. Kettleman. Len pays, but the next week the price rises to ten dollars. The week after that, George demands that Len do his math homework too. George smiles the whole time and acts like he is doing Len a favor. Len is done paying though. He and Nash have been doing chores and tasks and now they have saved enough money to buy Mr. Kettleman a new window. Now the two of them are going to knock on Mr. Kettleman's door and tell him the truth, then offer to replace the window. But when they get there, they see George talking to Mr. Kettleman. Is it too late for Len and Nash to tell the truth?

It is Hannah's third day at Camp Tamarack and she has cried into her pillow two nights in a row. Before she left home, she and Mom made a deal. If Hannah calls the camp office by seven o'clock on Wednesday, Dad will drive up and bring her home in the morning. Today is Wednesday and the clock in the dining hall says 6:50. Hannah likes many things about the camp. Her bunkmates are friendly, and her counselor, Jess, has taught her how to paddle a canoe. Better still, on Friday the whole cabin sets out on an overnight canoe trip to Eagle Island. Hannah has wanted to see Eagle Island ever since her big brother came home from camp full of stories about it. But Hannah also misses home. She wants her own bed, her own dog, and her mom's Saturday pancakes. Now Hannah is standing outside the office with her hand resting on the doorknob. Part of her has already packed her bag. Part of her is already headed to Eagle Island. Which way will Hannah go?

Lily is babysitting for the first time and she is starting her career by watching Teddy, who is two years old. His parents leave with one instruction: Teddy must be in his crib by eight, but Teddy has other plans. At 7:30 Lily reads him a story and tucks him into his crib. Two minutes later, Teddy has climbed out of his crib and is now standing in the hallway. So Lily chases him around a bit and then puts him back, but he climbs out again. He runs around more and hides behind the curtains. He unrolls an entire roll of toilet paper down the stairs. He turns on every light in the house. He shouts "More!" and holds up the same book for the fourth time. He giggles from inside the closet. Every time Lily gets him down, he pops back up like a jack-in-the-box. Eight o'clock comes and goes, and so does 8:30. Teddy is not even yawning. His parents will be home at nine. Can Lily get Teddy to sleep before their headlights hit the driveway?

The year is 1905 and Grandpa Cyrus has just bought the first motorcar in Cedar Bend. It's a bright red Sparrow Runabout that can reach thirty miles an hour. On a warm Sunday afternoon, Grandpa takes Henry for a drive. Suddenly, a goat wanders into the road and Grandpa climbs down to shoo it away. He tells Henry to hold the throttle lever right where it is. But the lever slips forward under Henry's hand and sticks there. The Sparrow lurches ahead with Henry alone at the wheel. He hauls the lever back but it will not budge. He yanks the brake handle, which squeals but barely slows the car. Main Street runs downhill. Henry steers around Mrs. Tully's chickens, swerves past the church picnic tables, and misses a mule cart by inches. People shout and dive out of the way. Grandpa is running behind, waving his hat. Ahead, the road ends at the covered bridge and the river. Can Henry stop the Sparrow before it reaches the water?

At Ridgeview Middle School, the first week of school has been called Bag Week for as long as anyone can remember. During Bag Week every sixth grader has to carry an eighth grader's backpack between classes. Also, sixth graders eat lunch in the cafeteria standing up and if an eighth grader says "Sing," a sixth grader has to sing the school song on the spot, right there in the hall. Everybody says it is harmless fun. Cody's big brother Wade did it. Cody's mom did it. Even the principal, Mr. Boswell, did it back in 1989, and there is a faded photo of him carrying two bags in the trophy case to prove it. So on the first morning of Bag Week, an eighth grader named Trey drops a backpack at Cody's feet and keeps walking. Cody ignores it, leaves it on the floor, and walks to class. By lunch, the whole school knows. The eighth graders glare at him in the halls. The teachers tell him to lighten up and be a good sport. Even his friend Mia says that he is making things worse for all of the sixth graders. But Cody feels that this tradition has gone on too long, and it's his responsibility to stand up. So he starts talking to every sixth grader he can find. His plan is simple. On Friday morning, not one backpack gets picked up. Can one sixth grader resist a practice that the whole school supports?

All last year, Farrah and her Grandpa Bob built a wooden rowboat in his garage, and they planned to launch it on Loon Lake on the first day of summer. Then, in March, Grandpa Bob passed away from a heart attack. Now the boat rests on its stand, finished except for one last plank. That plank is already cut, sanded, and leaning in the corner. Grandpa's pencil marks still run along the wood, and his coffee mug still sits on the workbench. Farrah's mom says there is no hurry. Mr. Varga from next door, Grandpa's old fishing partner, says he will hold the clamps whenever Farrah is ready. Every Saturday Farrah picks up the hammer and sets it back down. Part of her wants to row across the lake exactly the way she and Grandpa Bob had planned. Part of her feels that as long as the boat stays unfinished, she and Grandpa are still building it together. The first day of summer is one week away. Will Farrah finish what she and Grandpa Bob started?

Brooke and her mom are spending the weekend at the family's cabin in the mountains. A big snowstorm is expected tonight, so Mom drives down the mountain to buy groceries, promising to be back in an hour. Brooke stays behind to bring in firewood. She steps outside in her socks and leaves the kitchen door open behind her. When she turns around with an armload of logs, she freezes. A black bear is squeezing through the doorway, following the smell of the brownies cooling on the counter. Brooke's coat, boots, and phone are all inside the cabin. The bear gobbles the brownies in two bites, then hooks a claw into the fridge door and starts working on a block of cheese. Brooke remembers what a park ranger once told her: never get close to a bear, and never get between a bear and its food. So she bangs two logs together and shouts as loud as she can. The bear lifts its head, sniffs, and goes right back to eating. Brooke sprints around the cabin and props open the back door to give the bear an easy way out, but it shows no interest in leaving. The first flakes of snow begin to drift down, and Brooke's toes are going numb. Can she get the bear out of the cabin before the storm hits?

In the village of Briar Hill, people say that a strange market appears in the hollow behind the old mill for three nights every fall, and that the sellers at its stalls are goblins. On the first night, Elsa's little brother, Charlie, snuck out to see it for himself. He came home at sunrise with a golden kite that flies without any wind at all. But he traded his name for it! Now nobody remembers Charlie. At the bus stop, his best friend walks right past him as if he were a stranger. His teacher calls attendance and skips right over him as if his desk were empty. Only Elsa still remembers Charlie, and even her memories are starting to fade. Tonight is the last night of the market. Elsa walks into the hollow with a lantern, past stalls selling jars of thunder and bottles of moonlight. At the very last stall, a snarling goblin dangles a silver tag with Charlie's name stamped on it. "Everything has a price," it says with a grin. Can Elsa win back her brother's name before the market vanishes at dawn?

Jake's Uncle Bud owns a farm and a huge drone called the Hornet. The Hornet is as big as a kitchen table and it sprays the fields in an afternoon so that Uncle Bud can tend to other tasks. Jake has been learning to fly it all summer and today Uncle Bud finally lets Jake spray the last field by himself. Everything seems to be going fine until the controller screen flashes two words: SIGNAL LOST. Jake presses the button sequence to recall the Hornet, but it doesn't land as it is supposed to. Instead, it climbs higher, turns east, and flies away from the farm. Jake knows exactly where it is going. Last week Uncle Bud showed off the Hornet at the fairgrounds. The Hornet must still think that the fairgrounds are home. But the county fair opens today and thousands of people are already there. Worse still, the Hornet's tank is full of fertilizer that smells like dead fish. Jake mashes every button on the controller but the screen stays dark. He jumps on his bike and chases the drone down the road. The battery reads twelve percent. When it hits zero, the Hornet will drop wherever it happens to be. Can Jake stop the Hornet before something terrible happens?

Danny has collected baseball cards since he was six years old and for years he has dreamed about one card more than any other: the rookie card of Hammer Briggs, the greatest home run hitter of all time. On Saturday, his neighbor, Mr. Kowalski, holds a garage sale. He is moving to a tiny apartment across town and he is selling nearly everything he owns. At the end of one folding table sits a battered shoebox with a sign that says FREE. It is stuffed with old baseball cards. Danny carries the box home and starts sorting the cards into piles on his bedroom floor. Near the bottom of the box, he finds a Hammer Briggs rookie card, without a single bent corner. Danny looks it up online and nearly drops his phone. Cards like this one sell for around four thousand dollars. He figures that Mr. Kowalski must have had no idea. Danny got the card fair and square of course, and it was free. He wants to slide it into a plastic sleeve and keep it forever. But he also wants to be fair to Mr. Kowalski. The moving truck comes tomorrow morning. Will Danny keep the card or tell Mr. Kowalski the truth?

Every winter Riley builds the best snow fort on Linden Street and every winter it stands proudly until spring. But this year the Mulligan twins from the next block knocked it flat on the very first day and laughed all the way home. Riley rebuilt it taller and sprayed the walls with the garden hose until they froze into solid ice. But the twins came back with garden tools and shattered the walls. Then the twins planted a cardboard sign in Riley's front yard that read MULLIGAN TERRITORY in big red letters. That was the last straw. Riley recruited every kid on his block, even the kindergartners, and they made secret snowball stashes in advantageous positions. Now the twins are planning another raid. Who will hold the fort when the sun goes down?

It has rained in Florida for a week straight and the ground is as soggy as a wet sponge. This morning, Jamal is waiting at the bus stop at the end of his street. Suddenly, the road groans beneath his feet. A crack zigzags across the pavement, and then the street sags and drops away, opening a sinkhole wider than a car. Muddy water swirls at the bottom and the edges keep crumbling, creeping closer to the bus stop with every second. Jamal leaps back onto Mrs. Murphy's lawn and shouts for her to call 911. Then Jamal hears a familiar rumble. The school bus is coming around the bend with forty kids on board, and because of the curve, the driver will not see the hole until it is too late. Jamal yanks off his red raincoat and sprints along the grass toward the bend, waving it over his head like a flag. Behind him, another slab of road breaks off and splashes into the muddy water. Can Jamal warn the driver in time?

In 1962 a boy named Hops Doyle jumped higher than anyone in the history of Lakeview High. His high jump record has stood for more than sixty years and his photo still hangs above the gym doors. Some say that Hops still haunts the old gym. Now Malcolm is one jump away from breaking that record, but every time he gets close, strange things start to happen. The lights flicker. A cold wind blows through the gym even though every window is shut. He even found frost on the high jump mat inside the heated gym. Then Malcolm saw him: a pale boy in an old-fashioned track uniform sitting in the top row of the bleachers. He looked just like the boy in the photo. When Malcolm blinked, the boy was gone. The championship meet is Saturday night in the old gym, and Malcolm will get three tries at the record. Will Malcolm break the record, or will the ghost of Hops Doyle keep it forever?

Dante loves to skateboard and he is darn good at it. He can grind rails, jump curbs, and land kickflips without even thinking about it, like a bird flies. But in the town of Bellwood, he has nowhere to ride. Every bench downtown has a metal sign bolted to its slats that reads NO SKATEBOARDING, and every ledge and planter bristles with steel knobs installed for the sole purpose of preventing grinding. The fountain plaza is locked behind a fence at night, and anyone caught skating there gets a seventy-five dollar ticket for the first offense and worse for the second. One lazy Saturday morning, Dante walks the whole downtown with his camera and counts the signs, all 214 of them. He asks if he can skate at the youth center and the parks office, but at every counter someone shakes a head and points him somewhere else. So Dante and his friends build a small ramp on an empty lot behind the antique mall whose owner, Mrs. Baptiste, gave them permission and even helped haul the lumber. But a week later, a notice appears on her fence declaring that the ramp must come down or the owner will be fined daily. Dante decides that enough is enough, so he signs up for two minutes to speak at the spring town meeting. Can Dante make the case to legalize skating in Bellwood?

Todd lives in the fishing village of Gullhaven, where every family has a boat except his. Todd's family can't have a boat because they are cursed. You see, long ago, Todd's grandfather Orville refused to give the first fish of spring to the Salt King, the old god who commands the bottom of the bay. This is an old custom, paying tribute to the Salt King, but Orville thought it was unfair and tried to skip out on the debt, and since that day every boat the family has built has sunk to the bottom of the sea on its very first trip out. Todd wants to change this, so he has spent all winter building a boat of his own, plank by plank, because he intends to break the family curse himself. So on the night before the launch, Todd walks to the end of the dock, and a tall figure made of green water rises out of the bay wearing a crown of broken shells. The waves bow down around the royal specter. Todd drops to his knees and promises that he will give the Salt King what is owed, but the Salt King just laughs until the dock shakes. Can Todd settle a debt older than he is and break the family curse or will he be forever landbound?

The year is 1875 and Matilda's family farms a homestead claim on the Nebraska prairie. The wheat is nearly ready to cut and the garden is nearly ripe too. Matilda's job is to harvest the garden crops, which is an important job as whatever grows there has to carry her family through the long winter. One hot summer morning, Matilda notices a strange cloud in the west that glitters as it moves and makes a rushing sound like a prairie fire. Then the sky goes dark, and the cloud resolves into locusts, millions upon millions of them. They land on everything and cover the ground an inch deep. They strip the wheat down to the dirt and the corn down to bare stalks, and then they chew up the curtains in the farmhouse shed as well as any other edible material they contact. Matilda throws quilts and bedsheets over her garden rows, but the locusts eat the quilts. She lights smoky fires of wet straw and bangs a tin pan until her ears ring, but the insects keep coming, and every row that she wins back, they take two more. On the third morning, the only rows left are the potatoes, and they are safe under the ground for now, but Matilda will have to harvest them for her family to eat. Can she save enough of the garden crop to get her family through the winter?

Len's little brother, Nash, hit a baseball through Mr. Kettleman's greenhouse window. Nash was so frightened that he burst into tears and ran home, and nobody saw it happen except George Pace. George is fourteen years old and, coincidentally, was filming the whole thing on his phone as he walked through the park. The next morning, George finds Len at the bus stop and shows him the video. Then he tells Len the price: five dollars a week or the video goes to Mr. Kettleman and Nash may get arrested. Len pays him and then the next week, the price rises to ten dollars. Another week passes and now George demands that Len do his math homework as well, and George smiles the whole time, as if he is doing Len a favor. Len is done paying George though. He and Nash have been doing chores and tasks and now they have saved up enough money to buy Mr. Kettleman a new pane of glass to replace the broken one. The two of them are on their way to knock on Mr. Kettleman's door to tell him what really happened, but when they get there, they see George is already there talking to Mr. Kettleman. Is it too late for Len and Nash to tell the truth?

It is Hannah's third day at Camp Tamarack and she has cried into her pillow two nights in a row. Before she left home, she and Mom made a deal: if Hannah calls the camp office by seven o'clock on Wednesday, Dad will drive up and bring her home in the morning. Today is Wednesday and the clock in the dining hall says 6:50. Hannah likes many things about the camp: her bunkmates are friendly, her counselor, Jess, has taught her how to paddle a canoe, and on Friday the whole cabin sets out on an overnight canoe trip to Eagle Island, a place Hannah has wanted to see ever since her big brother came home from camp full of stories about it. But Hannah misses home. She wants her own bed, her own dog, and her mom's Saturday pancakes. Now Hannah stands outside the office with her hand resting on the doorknob. Part of her has already packed her bag, and part of her is already headed to Eagle Island. Which way will Hannah go?

Lily is babysitting for the first time and she is starting her career by watching Teddy, who is two years old. His parents leave at six with a single instruction: Teddy must be in his crib by eight, but Teddy, unfortunately, has other plans. At 7:30 Lily reads him a story and tucks him into his crib, but two minutes later he climbs out of his crib and is standing in the hallway again and giggling mischievously. Lily puts him back but he climbs out again just as fast, and then he hides behind the curtains. Lily continues to chase Teddy while he unrolls an entire roll of toilet paper down the stairs and switches on every light in the house. He shouts "More!" and holds up the same book for the fourth time, then giggles from inside the closet while Lily searches the kitchen. Every time Lily gets him down, he pops back up like a jack-in-the-box. Eight o'clock comes and goes, and so does 8:30, and Teddy is not even yawning. His parents will be home at nine. Can Lily get Teddy to sleep before their headlights hit the driveway?

The year is 1905 and Grandpa Cyrus has just bought the first motorcar in Cedar Bend, a bright red Sparrow Runabout that can reach thirty miles an hour. On a warm Sunday afternoon, Grandpa takes Henry for a drive and everything goes smoothly until a goat suddenly wanders into the road. Grandpa climbs down to shoo it away, telling Henry to hold the throttle lever right where it is. But the lever slips forward under Henry's hand and sticks there, and the Sparrow lurches ahead with Henry alone at the wheel. Henry hauls the lever back but it will not budge. He yanks the brake handle, which squeals in protest but barely slows the car. Main Street runs downhill so the Sparrow is increasing its speed. Henry steers around Mrs. Tully's chickens, swerves past the church picnic tables, and misses a mule cart by inches, while people shout and dive out of the way. Grandpa is running behind, waving his hat. Ahead, the road ends at the covered bridge and the river. Can Henry stop the Sparrow before it reaches the water?

At Ridgeview High School, the first week of school has been called Bag Week for as long as anyone can remember. During Bag Week every freshman has to carry a senior's backpack between classes, all the freshmen eat lunch in the cafeteria standing up, and if a senior says "Sing," a freshman has to perform the school song on the spot, right there in the hall. Everybody insists that it is harmless fun: Cody's big brother Wade did it, Cody's mom did it, and even the principal, Mr. Boswell, did it back in 1989, and a faded photo of him carrying two bags sits in the trophy case to prove it. On the first morning of Bag Week, a senior named Trey drops a backpack at Cody's feet and keeps walking without a word. Cody ignores it, leaves it on the floor, and walks to class. By lunch, the whole school knows. The seniors glare at him in the halls, the teachers tell him to lighten up and be a good sport, and even his friend Mia says that he is making things worse for all of the freshmen. But Cody feels that this tradition has gone on too long, and it's his responsibility to stand up, no matter how old this tradition is or how many people smile about it. So he starts talking to every freshman he can find, and his plan is simple. On Friday morning, not one backpack gets picked up. Can one freshman resist a practice that the whole school supports?

All last year, Farrah and her Grandpa Bob built a wooden rowboat in his garage, plank by plank, with a plan to launch it on Loon Lake on the first day of summer. Then, in March, Grandpa Bob passed away suddenly from a heart attack. Now the boat rests on its stand, complete except for one last plank, which is already cut, sanded, and leaning in the corner where Grandpa Bob left it. His pencil marks still run along the wood and his coffee mug still sits on the workbench. Farrah's mom insists that there is no hurry, and Mr. Varga from next door, Grandpa's old fishing partner, has offered to hold the clamps whenever Farrah is ready. Every Saturday, Farrah picks up the hammer and then sets it back down. Part of her longs to row across the lake exactly the way that she and Grandpa Bob had planned, but another part feels that as long as the boat stays unfinished, she and Grandpa are still building it together. The first day of summer is one week away. Will Farrah finish what she and Grandpa Bob started?

Brooke and her mom are spending the weekend at the family's cabin in the mountains. A major snowstorm is forecast for tonight, so Mom drives down the mountain to stock up on groceries, promising to be back within an hour. Brooke stays behind to haul in firewood. She steps outside in her socks and leaves the kitchen door open behind her, and when she turns around with an armload of logs, she freezes. A black bear is squeezing its enormous body through the doorway, following the scent of the brownies cooling on the counter. Brooke's coat, boots, and phone are all inside the cabin. The bear devours the brownies in two bites, then hooks a claw into the refrigerator door and begins working its way through a block of cheese. Brooke remembers what a park ranger once told her: never approach a bear, and never come between a bear and its food. So she bangs two logs together and shouts until her throat aches. The bear raises its head, sniffs the air, and calmly returns to its meal. Brooke races around the cabin and props open the back door to offer the bear an easy way out, but it shows no interest in leaving a kitchen full of food. The first flakes of snow begin to drift down through the pines, the temperature is dropping fast, and Brooke's toes are going numb. Can she get the bear out of the cabin before the storm hits?

In the village of Briar Hill, people say that a strange market appears in the hollow behind the old mill for three nights every fall, and that the merchants who run its stalls are goblins. On the first night, Elsa's little brother, Charlie, slipped out of the house to see it for himself. He returned at sunrise with a golden kite that soars without the slightest breeze, but he traded his name for it! Now nobody remembers that Charlie exists. At the bus stop, his best friend walks past him as though he were a stranger, and his teacher calls attendance and skips over him as if his desk were empty. Only Elsa still remembers her brother, and even her memories are beginning to dissolve. Tonight is the last night of the market, so Elsa descends into the hollow with a lantern, passing stalls that sell jars of thunder and bottles of moonlight. At the very last stall, a snarling goblin dangles a silver tag stamped with Charlie's name. "Everything has a price," it says, grinning. Can Elsa win back her brother's name before the market vanishes at dawn?

Jake's Uncle Bud owns a farm and a huge spraying drone called the Hornet. The Hornet is as big as a kitchen table and it can spray every field on the farm in a single afternoon while Uncle Bud attends to other tasks. Jake has been learning to fly it all summer and today Uncle Bud finally lets Jake spray the last field by himself. Everything seems to be going fine until the controller screen flashes two words: SIGNAL LOST. Jake presses the button sequence to recall the Hornet, but it doesn't land the way it is supposed to. Instead, it climbs higher, turns east, and flies away from the farm with a steady, determined hum. Jake knows exactly where it is going. Last week Uncle Bud showed off the Hornet at the fairgrounds, so the Hornet must still think the fairgrounds are home. The county fair opens today, and unfortunately for unsuspecting attendees crowding the midway, the Hornet's tank is full of fertilizer that smells like dead fish. Jake mashes every button on the controller but the screen stays dark. He launches some rocks from his slingshot, attempting to clip the Hornet, but it zigs out of the way. So Jake jumps on his bike and chases the drone down the road, pedaling until his legs burn. The battery reads twelve percent. When it hits zero, the Hornet will drop wherever it happens to be. Can Jake stop the Hornet before something terrible happens?

Danny has collected baseball cards since he was six years old and for years he has dreamed about one card above all others: the rookie card of Hammer Briggs, the greatest home run hitter who ever lived. On Saturday, his neighbor, Mr. Kowalski, holds a garage sale because he is moving to a tiny apartment across town and selling nearly everything he owns. At the end of one folding table sits a battered shoebox with a handwritten sign that says FREE. This box is stuffed with old baseball cards. Danny carries the box home and begins sorting the cards into piles on his bedroom floor, and near the bottom of the box, he finds it: a Hammer Briggs rookie card without a single bent corner. When Danny looks it up online, he nearly drops his phone. Cards like this one sell for around four thousand dollars, so he figures that Mr. Kowalski must have had no idea what he was giving away. Danny got the card fair and square of course, and it was free. He wants to slide it into a plastic sleeve and keep it forever, but he also wants to be fair to Mr. Kowalski, who is selling his own furniture just to move across town. The moving truck comes tomorrow morning. Will Danny keep the card or tell Mr. Kowalski the truth?

Every winter Riley builds the biggest snow fort on Linden Street, and every winter it stands proudly until the spring thaw. This year, however, the Mulligan twins from the next block flattened it on the very first day and laughed all the way home. Riley rebuilt it taller and sprayed the walls with the garden hose until they froze into solid ice. But the twins came back with garden tools and shattered the walls into frosty snow bits. Then the twins planted a cardboard sign in Riley's front yard that declared MULLIGAN TERRITORY in big red letters, and that was the last straw. Riley recruited every kid on his block, down to the kindergartners, and they made secret snowball stashes in advantageous positions. Now the twins are planning another raid. Who will hold the fort when the sun goes down?

It has rained in Florida for a week straight and the ground beneath the neighborhood is as saturated as a sponge. This morning, Jamal is waiting at the bus stop at the end of his street when the road groans beneath his feet, a low, grinding sound that he can feel in his chest. A crack zigzags across the pavement and then the street sags and collapses, opening a sinkhole wider than a car. Muddy water churns at the bottom and the edges continue to crumble, creeping closer to the bus stop with every passing second. Jamal leaps back onto Mrs. Murphy's lawn and shouts for her to call 911. Then Jamal hears a familiar rumble. The school bus is rounding the bend with forty kids on board, and from the driver's seat, the hole will remain hidden by the curve until it is far too late. Jamal tears off his red raincoat and sprints along the grass toward the bend, waving it over his head like a signal flag. Behind him, another slab of road breaks loose and splashes into the muddy water. Can Jamal warn the driver in time?

In 1962 a boy named Hops Doyle soared higher than anyone in the history of Lakeview High, and his high jump record has stood for more than sixty years. His faded black-and-white photo still hangs above the gym doors and according to school legend, Hops still haunts the old gym. Now Malcolm is a single jump away from breaking that record but every time he approaches it, strange things start to happen. The lights flicker and buzz. A cold wind sweeps across the gym even though every window is sealed. And he almost slipped on a delicate layer of frost on the high jump mat, even though the heaters in the gym were running full blast. Then Malcolm saw him: a pale boy in an old-fashioned track uniform, sitting alone in the top row of the bleachers and watching with an unreadable expression. The boy was identical to the one in the faded photo. When Malcolm blinked, the boy had vanished. The championship meet is Saturday night in the old gym, and Malcolm will get three tries at the record. Will Malcolm break the record, or will the ghost of Hops Doyle keep it forever?