It's no accident when Mrs. Olinski selects Noah, Nadia, Ethan and Julian to represent her sixth grade class in the Academic Bowl competition: all are chosen by design. But just who's design is it? Mrs. Olinski, who is back teaching for the first time since a car accident left her paralyzed, can't say for certain why she picked each child, and it's almost magical the way the four click when they come together. They complement one another's talents to make an unbeatable team. Unknown to their teacher, the children's lives interconnect outside of school, too, in a seemingly fated way, so when Julian suggests they call their team The Souls, it just seems right. E.L. Kongisburg's funny, inventive and entertaining story weaves in and out of the lives of its memorable characters to explore both the truths and the mysteries of life, and to celebrate the wonderful things that can happen when people speak and act from their hearts. (Ages 9-12)

Four students, with their own individual stories, develop a special bond and attract the attention of their teacher, a paraplegic, who chooses them to represent their sixth-grade class in the Academic Bowl competition. Mrs. Eva Marie Olinski always gave good answers. Whenever she was asked how she had selected her team for the Academic Bowl, she chose one of several good answers. Most often she said that the four members of her team had skills that balanced one another. That was reasonable. Sometimes she said that she knew her team would practice. That was accurate. To the district superintendent of schools, she gave a bad answer, but she did that only once, only to him, and if that answer was not good, her reason for giving it was. The fact was that Mrs. Olinski did not know how she had chosen her team, and the further fact was that she didn't know that she didn't know until she did know. Of course, that is true of most things you do not know up to and including the very last second before you do. And for Mrs. Olinski that was not until Bowl Day was over and so was the work of her four sixth graders. They called themselves The Souls. They told Mrs. Olinski that they were The Souls long before they were a team, but she told them that they were a team as soon as they became The Souls. Then after a while, teacher and team agreed that they were arguing chicken-or-egg. Whichever way it began -- chicken-or-egg, team-or-The Souls -- it definitely ended with an egg. Definitely, an egg.