Jamie Kelly shares with her diary her excitement about the fact that students from Wodehouse Middle School will be going to Mackerel Middle School temporarily.

"Uptight elfin historian Brangwain Spurge is on a mission: survive being catapulted across the mountains into goblin territory, deliver a priceless peace offering to their mysterious dark lord, and spy on the goblin kingdom from which no elf has returned alive in more than a hundred years. Brangwains host, the goblin archivist Werfel, is delighted to show Brangwain around. They should be the best of friends, but a series of extraordinary double crosses,...

When the farmer is away, Zoey, believing she knows all about lambs, takes care of the new flock of babies.

Attending Toy Academy to train in the art of play, misfit little toy Grumbolt, who is not an action figure, a stuffed animal or a collectible, resolves to find his proper place before a rival plot by Evil Toy Academy compels Grumbolt to take a dangerous risk to save his school.

A class visit to the Gross-Me-Out exhibit at the science museum inspires Stink Moody to create a variety of terrible smells to put on the sneakers he plans to enter in the World's Worst Super-Stinky Sneaker contest.

Henry bargains with his father to keep his dog Ribsy out of trouble for two months. His reward will be a trip salmon-fishing if he is successful.

When Kitty and Puppy frustrate their owners with their constant fighting, they are sent off to obedience school. Kitty has plans for school, however, and it isn't long before he makes his influence felt.

Is Lemony Snicket a detective or a smoke detector? Do you smell smoke? Young apprentice Lemony Snicket is investigating a case of arson but soon finds himself enveloped in the ever-increasing mystery that haunts the town of Stain'd-by-the-Sea. Who is setting the fires? What secrets are hidden in the Department of Education? Why are so many schoolchildren in danger? Is it all the work of the notorious villain Hangfire? How could you even ask that?...

Both Nate Wright and school bully Randy Betancourt have crushes on the new girl Ruby, and altercations between the two boys result in peer counseling sessions that eventually lead to an unlikely friendship and their becoming teammates on the school's ultimate frisbee Mud Bowl team.

Supremely confident middle school student Nate Wright manages to make getting detention from every one of his teachers in the same day seem like an achievement.