Cash, Fitch, and Bird Thomas are three siblings in seventh grade together in Park, Delaware. In 1986, as the country waits expectantly for the launch of the Space Shuttle Challenger, they each struggle with their own personal anxieties. Cash, who loves basketball but has a newly broken wrist, is in danger of failing seventh grade for the second time. Fitch spends every afternoon playing Major Havoc at the arcade on Main. And Bird, his twelve-year-old...

George and Harold, and their doubles, Yesterday George and Yesterday Harold, have a good thing going. Two of them go to school, while the other two hide in the tree house and play video games all day-then they switch! But when their malicious gym teacher, Mr Meaner, creates a method of mind control that turns their fellow students into attentive, obedient, perfect children, the future of all humanity will be in their hands!

It is the first day of second grade and already Buddy is disappointed because his class has a new teacher, not the one he wanted, and there is a new student, Bea, who is boisterous and much too pushy for the reserved Buddy--and who insists that they are friends.