During the pilot year of a Los Angeles school system integration program, Armstrong and Charlie learn to cope with everything from first crushes and playground politics to the loss of loved ones and racial prejudice in the 1970s.

Charlie isn’t looking forward to sixth grade. If he starts sixth grade, chances are he’ll finish it, and he’ll be older than his older brother ever was.

Armstrong isn’t looking forward to sixth grade either. He’ll have to wake up at five-thirty to ride a bus to an all-white school in the Hollywood Hills. When they are assigned seats next to each other, what starts as a rivalry becomes a close friendship.

Set in Los Angeles in the 1970s, Armstrong and Charlie is the funny and heartwarming tale of two boys. Different, yet the same.