Allan Woodrow

Eleven-year-old Otto wants a dog, and his older sister Lexi wants a cat, so their mother suggests that whoever can raise enough money to pay for their pet can choose--and so the competition begins.

When we last saw our hero Bolt Waddle, he'd narrowly escaped the clutches of the evil Baron Chordata, but not the fate of becoming a half-boy, half-penguin for life. Living with his penguin colony far from other humans, he's adjusting to life as a full-time werepenguin when his bandit friend Annika tracks him down and begs for his help. Her father has been imprisoned by the Earl of Sphen, another ruthless werepenguin who rules his small country with...

Class 507 is terrible, and one day, after a particularly disastrous science experiment, Ms. Bryce quits and walks out in the middle of class, and the school office never finds out--at first all the fifth graders enjoy goofing off, but after a few days that starts getting boring, and the students begin to realize that school without a teacher is not easy, cooperating is difficult, and keeping a secret is harder than they thought.