What Do Fish Have to Do with Anything?

Book excerpt: Avi charts the turning points in seven young lives in this extraordinary collection of short stories. In the overlapping years when childhood and adolescence blend and shift like waves and sand, nothing is certain and everything is changing. Now award-winning author Avi creates seven astonishing portraits of life in the middle-school years. In these stories you will meet, among others, William, of "What Do Fish Have to Do with Anything?" who wonders why he shouldn't ask questions that have no answers. Is it because he might discover the truth? A minister's son, the baddest of the bad, is dared to be good in "The Goodness of Matt Kaizer." And in the chilling tale, "Pets," Eve is haunted by the ghosts of her cats. Always with a surprise built in, an angle unseen, these are stories that step just beyond the edge of the everyday.