Riley, a fifth grader, was just no good at baseball. He couldn't bat and he couldn't field. His best friend, Kaylee, was a super player. And she was a girl! The trouble was Riley's dad had been a sports star when he was a kid. He just wouldn't let Riley quit trying to be good in at least at one sport. His dad kept talking about "letting the team down" if he quit. If he couldn't hit the ball, how could Riley be letting the team down by quitting?

One day while practicing in the yard, Riley let a ball roll into the street. He ran to get the ball and stopped short at the curb. Unfortunately, a driver passing by thought he was going out into the street. She braked suddenly and lost control of the car and hit a tree. The passenger in the car, a Border collie and champion show dog, was injured. Later, when Riley visited the veterinarian, he found out the dog had lost a front leg. When he heard the owner say she was going to have the dog "put down" because he was now useless, Riley volunteered to take the dog home with him.

Now Riley had a new set of problems. The dog, now named Champ, had recovered and didn't seem to be bothered by losing a leg. He wanted to be active. When he was bored, he tore up things around the house. He wanted out to run and play with Riley. A next door neighbor built some obstacles to put out in the yard. He encouraged Riley to teach his three-legged dog to run through the various obstacles. The baseball team members thought Riley's dog was neat and volunteered to help train him to run the obstacle course. Champ was pretty good at it, so Riley was encouraged by his friends to enter the contest in which local dogs competed.

Just before the contest, Riley heard that if Champ did well in the competition, the lady who had owned him before wanted the dog returned to her. Should Riley help Champ to do his best or should he try to get Champ to lose? This was one event he couldn't just quit. Could he count on his dad to help him keep Champ, win or lose?

Solving a modern day mystery helps kids learn
more about Shakespeare

Hero, a sixth grade girl, is named after a character in Shakespeare's play, "Much Ado about Nothing." The name is not surprising since her father teaches English literature at a local college and is an avid fan of Shakespeare. The family has just moved into a new house and Hero will be starting a new school. She already knows the kids will make fun or her name. She is not eager to try once again to fit in with a new crowd.

Hero finds out that the most popular and the cutest boy in school is Danny Cordova. Of course, he is in eighth grade and would never show an interest in a sixth grader, or so Hero thought. When Hero becomes friendly with her elderly next door neighbor, Mrs. Roth, she finds out that Danny also knows Mrs. Roth and likes to visit her. Hero and Danny learn from Mrs. Roth that a valuable diamond is rumored to have been hidden in the house that Hero and her family live in.

The two kids set out to try to find the mysterious diamond. The jewel is supposed to have come from a necklace that had belonged to the de Vere family, descendents of Edward de Vere who had lived in England at the same time Shakespeare wrote his plays. In fact, de Vere, who later became the Earl of Oxford, was thought by some scholars to have been the actual author of Shakespeare's famous plays.

As Hero and Danny search for the diamond, they find out about the possible connections between Edward de Vere, William Shakespeare, Anne Boleyn (the wife of King Henry VIII, later beheaded by the King), and Elizabeth, Anne Boleyn's daughter who later became England's most powerful ruler. Hero, who wouldn't even read the play from which her name was taken, now wants to know more and more about Shakespeare and his times.

The popular girls in school are all jealous of Hero because she is spending so much time with the gorgeous Danny Cordova. Of course, they don't realize that the two are trying to solve a 500 year-old mystery and find a priceless diamond at the same time.

Are there creatures believed to be extinct
that can still be found alive?

Thirteen-year-old twin brother and sister, Marty and Grace O'Hara are boarding school students in Switzerland when the story begins. They receive the bad news that their parents, world-famous photojournalists, have been lost in a helicopter crash in the Amazon. The twins are informed they are to fly to join their Uncle Travis on his private island near Seattle in the northwestern United States. Uncle Travis? They didn't know such as person even existed.

It turns out that Uncle Travis is their mother's brother. He is a veterinarian who heads a group of scientist-adventurers who specialize in tracking down creatures that may or may not even exist. Called "cryptids," these creatures include such things as Sasquatch, Yeti or the Abominable Snowman, the Loch Ness Monster, other sea creatures, and a variety of dinosaurs that people claim to have spotted in isolated locations.

When the kids join their uncle, they find that he and his island are just as strange as expected. However, Travis is really their uncle and he is determined to help them find out if their parents might still be alive. First, though, Uncle Travis has to complete a trip to the interior of Africa to capture a dinosaur that he "knows" can be found there. Marty, who is highly venturesome, wants to go with his uncle. Grace, who is much more fearful and restrained that Marty, is not at all enthusiastic about any of this. She prefers reading about dangerous adventures rather than actually participating in them. She would just as soon go back to boarding school.

Through a bizarre event, the two kids are relieved of making a decision at all. While they are supposed to be on their way back to their Swiss boarding school, they are accidentally ejected into the isolated interior of Africa, where the dinosaurs are supposedly to be found. And the kids are by themselves. Of course, this is where the real suspense and adventure begins.

This book has just as many twists and turns and unpredictable events as any grown-up novel. Once you start it, though, you won't want to put it down.