- Drums, Girls, and Dangerous Pie (2005)
Thirteen-year-old Steven has a totally normal life: he plays the drums in the All-Star Jazz band, has a crush on the hottest girl in the school, and is constantly annoyed by his five-year-old brother, Jeffrey. But when Jeffrey is diagnosed with Leukemia, Steven's world is turned up side down. He is forced to deal with his brother's illness and his parents' attempts to keep the family in one piece.
- Notes From the Midnight Driver (2006)
The headless gnome was not Alex's fault; it was his mother's. Or maybe his father's. Either way, if his father hadn't run off with his third-grade teacher, then his mother wouldn't be on a date and Alex wouldn't need to get drunk by himself, steal his mother's car and smash a $500 lawn gnome. As far as Alex is concerned, he shouldn't be punished for the damage, but that's not how his mother, his lawyer and the juvenile court judge see it. To pay back the $500, Alex must do 100 hours of community service at a local nursing home. There, he is assigned to be a companion to Sol, a man known for his cantankerous nature and ability to make volunteers run home in tears. Sol frustrates Alex, but he can't get the judge to change her mind about the assignment. It's looking like the longest 100 hours of Alex's life --- until the day he plays his guitar for Sol.
- Zen and the Art of Faking It (2007)
With a father in jail and a mother trying hard to keep her family together, San Lee’s peripatetic home life is anything but zen. He’s entering yet another new school as an outside eighth-grader — and moving from big town Houston to small-town Pennsylvania isn’t exactly his idea of fun. When he answers a few too many questions correctly in his new social studies class (he did just have ancient religions at his last school), suddenly, San becomes the local Zen Master and most unlikely school hero to boot. Being a Chinese adoptee (of white parents) even helps to make him look the part.
The fate of the Bulldog's Little League season rests on Willie Ryan's shoulders. The next pitch will decide his fate: hit a single, the Bulldogs win and Willie's a hero. Strike out, the Bulldogs lose and Willie proves that he is "victory challenged." Lucky for Willie, he had Lizzie to compound the magnitude of the moment ... and the humiliation of striking out! He needed to be alone so Willie took the shortcut through the woods. When he spots a leftover food bag in a stream and picks it up, he gets the surprise of his life: out pops Dodger, a blue chimpanzee sporting a pirate patch. And Dodger has a plan. He'll grant Willie three wishes AND help him become a better baseball player. Will it work? This is a humorous first-person story about a fifth grader and his life.
- Dodger for President (2009)
Fifth-grader Willie Ryan makes the mistake of leaving his ex-genie, invisible blue-chimp buddy Dodger unsupervised and ends up having to run for student-council president against ruthless and popular James Beeks. Willie's best human friend, Lizzie (who can also see Dodger), can't keep them out of the election and ends up on the ticket as VP. Dodger's help is usually anything but helpful; to make matters worse, James's VP is class tough-guy Craig, and Willie's second-grader sister Amy is determined to get to the bottom of every strange occurrence.
Jeffrey isn't a little boy with cancer anymore. He's a teen who's in remission, but life still feels fragile. The aftereffects of treatment have left Jeffrey with an inability to be a great student or to walk without limping. His parents still worry about him. His older brother, Steven, lost it and took off to Africa to be in a drumming circle and "find himself." Jeffrey has a little soul searching to do, too, which begins with his escalating anger at Steven, an old friend who is keeping something secret, and a girl who is way out of his league but who thinks he's cute.
