One Chinese New Year, her mother sends Goldy Luck to the pandas next door with a plate of turnip cakes, but the pandas are out and disaster follows. Includes a recipe for turnip cakes and an explanation of Chinese New Year.

A story about a rude cake who never says please or thank you or listens to its parents, and a Giant Cyclops who is polite.

Stuck in a rut of bad luck, Nate Wright gets a boost from Chad's lucky foot and suddenly, good luck is everywhere he turns.

Since she ran away from home Emerson has been living on the streets of Portland, relying on her wits and her friend Vince to get by, but as a meteor approaches North America they meet Carl, who tells them he has been granting people's wishes--so what will they do if this is their last day on Earth, and, more important, what will they do if it is not?

Just before his thirteenth birthday, Jeremy Fink receives a keyless locked box--set aside by his father before his death five years earlier--that purportedly contains the meaning of life.

Jamie Kelly shares with her diary her search for inner beauty, dealing with fund raising, and problems in Phys ed class.

Among his other Christmas presents a spoiled young prince receives a stick from his limping grandmother--at first he is annoyed, but after his other presents quickly break, he discovers that a stick can become almost anything, and he learns to appreciate his grandmother's gift.

In alternating chapters, seventeen-year-old Johnny Least-Weasel, who is better known for brains than brawn, worries about his missing grandfather, and the grandfather, Albert Least-Weasel, struggles to survive, caught in his own steel trap in the Alaskan winter.