This is the story of a middle-school "band of brothers" -- five friends who need to stick together after they set up a hideout in an abandoned bomb shelter and discover that the only way to be true friends is to reveal their secrets and help each other out.

Link, Michael, and Dana live in a quiet town, but it's woken up very quickly when someone sneaks into school and vandalizes it with a swastika. Nobody can believe it. How could such a symbol of hate end up in the middle of their school? Who would do such a thing? As Link, Michael, and Dana try to get to the truth, they encounter not just the crimes of the present, but also the crimes of the past.

There are two things Trevor loves more than anything else: playing war-based video games and his great-grandfather Jacob, who is a true-blue, bona fide war hero. At the height of the war, Jacob helped liberate a small French village, and was given a hero's welcome upon his return to America. Now it's decades later, and Jacob wants to retrace the steps he took during the war — from training to invasion to the village he is said to have saved. Trevor thinks this is the coolest idea ever. But as they get to the village, Trevor discovers there's more to the story than what he's heard his whole life, causing him to wonder about his great-grandfather's heroism, the truth about the battle he fought, and importance of genuine valor.

Milo has a problem. He's trying to do a project on the food chain, so he charts the growth of a baby chick, and makes arrangements to serve his specimen to the judges at the science fair. But he's baffled by the rest of his class. They name the chick Henrietta, sign up to take her home on weekends, and claim that she's a good luck charm, a friend, even the new hockey team mascot! Milo just wants to win the science fair to impress his dad. But when the class finds out that Henrietta will be cooked and eaten for Milo's project, everyone panics! They'll have to work together in ways they've never imagined in order to hatch a plot to save the championship game, the science fair — and Henrietta!

Bruno and Boots are always in trouble. So the Headmaster, aka "The Fish" decides it would be best to separate them. Bruno must now room with ghoulish Elmer Dimsdale, plus his plants, goldfish, and ants. And Boots is stuck with nerdy, preppy, paranoid George Wexford-Smyth III. Of course, this means war. Because Bruno and Boots are determined to get their old room back, no matter what it takes. And the skunk is only the beginning...