With her kitten, Moisturizer, missing and having fought with her best friend, Margaret, eight-year-old Clementine finds it hard to concentrate on doing her best as her classmate's Friend of the Week.

What are people for? That's the burning question on the mind of Leeva Spayce Thornblossom. Fame! says Leeva's mom, the mayor of Nutsmore. Money! says her dad, the town treasurer. With the help of an orphaned badger, a risk-averse boy in a hazmat suit, and the town's librarians, Leeva sets off to discover her own answer--setting off a chain of events that will change Nutsmore forever.

After being forced to give up his pet fox Pax, a young boy named Peter decides to leave home and get his best friend back. Pax and Peter have been inseparable ever since Peter rescued him as a kit. But one day the unimaginable happens: Peter's dad enlists in the military and makes him return the fox to the wild. At his grandfather's house three hundred miles away from home, Peter knows he isn't where he should be - with Pax. He strikes out on his...