In a journal for English class, Finn Reeder relates the impact of an H1N1 flu epidemic among his classmates and teachers, but unfortunately excluding class bully Vic, as everyone seems to go insane trying to avoid or cope with the virus.
Beginning in 1490, Anacaona keeps a record of her life as a possible successor to the supreme chief of Xaragua, as wife of the chief of Maguana, and as a warrior battling the first white men to arrive in the West Indies, ravenous for gold.
Ernie, an overweight high school student and long-time target of bullies, relies on his best friend Will to watch his back until Will, overwhelmed by problems at home and guilt over his brother's death, seeks a final solution.
Nikki's diary describes a frightful Halloween, on which she helps with her sister's ballet class party at the same time she is Brandon's date for their middle school Halloween dance. Ages 9-13.
Eleven-year-old Jenny, whose family came from Russia to America to start a new life, meets the famous Russian composer on his 1891 trip to the New World and writes about it in her diary.
When scholarship student Nikki Maxwell, whose father is the school exterminator, decides to enter the talent show at her expensive private school, her nemesis MacKenzie threatens to reveal Nikki's status to the rest of the school.