Told in alternating voices, the teacher and students in room 117 find their lives changed over the course of a school year.

Jackson Greene has a reputation as a prankster at Maplewood Middle School, but after the last disaster he is trying to go straight--but when it looks like Keith Sinclair may steal the election for school president from Jackson's former best friend Gabriela, he assembles a team to make sure Keith does not succeed.

Greg records his sixth-grade experiences in a middle school where he and his best friend, Rowley, undersized weaklings amid boys who need to shave twice daily, hope just to survive, but when Rowley grows more popular, Greg must take drastic measures to save their friendship.

Harassed at her middle school, not taken seriously at home, and with a "perfect" older brother, Matthew, to live up to, thirteen-year-old Claire has always felt like her life was cursed--then one morning, when she are her beloved father are talking at breakfast, her father suddenly falls over with a stroke, and suddenly everything changes.

Rafe Khatchadorian is horrified that because of a missed science assignment he has to go to summer school; but instead of three weeks in a school room, he finds himself as a volunteer at BushyTail animal refuge, which is really hard, smelly work--and somehow he needs to use the experience (and the help of a girl he meets there) to produce a first-class science report.

After a fight at school leaves Marcus facing suspension, Marcus's mother takes him and his younger brother, who has Down syndrome, to Puerto Rico to visit relatives they do not remember or have never met, and while there Marcus starts searching for his father, who left their family ten years ago and is somewhere on the island.

Merci Suarez knew that sixth grade would be different, but she had no idea just how different. For starters, Merci has never been like the other kids at her private school in Florida, because she and her older brother, Roli, are scholarship students. They don't have a big house or a fancy boat, and they have to do extra community service to make up for their free tuition. So when bossy Edna Santos sets her sights on the new boy who happens to be Merci's...

Greg records his sixth grade experiences in a middle school where he and his best friend, Rowley, undersized weaklings amid boys who need to shave twice daily, hope just to survive, but when Rowley grows more popular, Greg must take drastic measures to save their friendship.

Greg Heffley tells about his summer vacation and his attempts to steer clear of trouble when he returns to middle school and tries to keep his older brother Rodrick from telling everyone about Greg's most humiliating experience of the summer.

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.