Middle

Because it is home to anacondas weighing over three hundred pounds, Goliath birdeater tarantulas with a leg span the size of your face, and electric eels who have enough voltage to stun a horse, you might think the Amazon is a place that can cause more harm than good. But you'd be wrong...

Considered the "lungs of the world," the Amazon provides a full fifth of the world's oxygen, and every year unsustainable human practices destroy 2.7 million acres of it. What can be done to help? That's where Project Piaba comes in.

In Elkhorn Slough, an inlet on the California coast, seagrass grows healthy and strong in the shallow water, providing homes for fish, preventing erosion, and trapping carbon from the environment.

This healthy seagrass baffled marine biologist Brent Hughes. Water in the slough is chock-full of nutrients from fertilizer runoff on nearby farms. Normally, nutrient-polluted water supports huge population of algae that block sunlight from reaching the seagrass, and the seagrass dies. Why has the slough's seagrass thriving?

Julia spends a lot of time looking up. But please don't call her short; she is boycotting that word. She's not allowed to boycott the local theater production of The Wizard of Oz, however. Her mother insisted that she audition, and now she has been cast as a Munchkin - even though she can't dance or carry a tune. Her summer is not starting well.

A red folder with your name on it in BIG LETTERS is not a good sign.

On the first day of sixth grade, Jimmy Murphy is already in trouble. The worst student in the class, he was hoping to make a fresh start, but his new teacher, Sister Angelica Rose, is out to get him. She picks on him, humiliates him in front of his classmates, and makes new entries in the red MURPHY folder. Worst of all, she volunteers Jimmy to preform onstage with a bunch of second graders, wearing a green banana costume.