Stephanie S Tolan

Jake, a budding juvenile delinquent, is sent for home schooling to the arty and eccentric Applewhite family's Creative Academy, where he discovers talents and interests he never knew he had.

Thirteen-year-old E.D. Applewhite, still reeling from her bewildering kiss with former bad boy Jake, embarks on a cross-country road trip in a wildly painted school bus with her eccentric, highly creative family, as they compete in an art educational quest for a big cash prize.

During her solitary convalescence from a crippling accident, twelve-year-old Charley finds a wild dog, and the arduous process of training him leads her to explore her feelings about her mother's death two years earlier.

Eleven-year-old Johnna, who is deeply involved in the sixth grade Halloween pageant although her family views it as a celebration of an un-Christian holiday, decides that she must follow her own beliefs.

Having been dragged by his mother from one commune to another as she searches for a place to belong, fourteen-year-old Ty finds conditions at the new place, the Kingdom, intolerable, even while realizing that for some, such as his mother, this way of life is a haven.