A new school year is never easy, but the transition from elementary to middle school can be an especially trying experience for kids. The "babies" of the school once more, newly minted middle-schoolers must re-establish their identities in a more mature and educationally demanding environment. Not surprisingly, one of the biggest goals is to simply fit in.

How does it feel then, to be not just the tiniest kid in the class but the smallest student in the entire school?

That's the challenge facing Will Graf and his adopted brother, Max, of Ben Avon, who just started sixth grade at Avonworth Middle School in Ohio Township. Both boys were born with achondroplasia, the most common of the approximately 200 diagnosed forms of dwarfism. Will was born in Pittsburgh, Max in Korea.

As such, the 11-year-olds stand barely 43 inches tall -- shorter, even, than their 5-year-old brother, Charlie, a kindergartner.

The brothers are so small, in fact, that their disproportionately short legs are barely visible beneath their desks, which this year are arranged in tight rows facing the teachers' desks rather than in welcoming clusters and semicircles as they had at the elementary level.

The vast difference in size is a change that hasn't gone unnoticed by the boys, who were last profiled in the Post-Gazette more than five years ago. As Max explains so matter-of-factly one day after school, almost all of their friends grew over the summer, some quite a few inches.

"So before I was just kinda looking up like that," he says, dipping his head back slightly to demonstrate how he had to look up to meet their eyes. "Now I'm like that," he continues, bending his head back clear to his shoulders.

"I have to look up pretty high now," agrees Will.

Not that either boy thinks that's such a big deal. Because most of their classmates have known them since kindergarten, everyone's "cool" with the disparity in height. And even if they weren't, the brothers are long used to fielding questions and correcting misconceptions about what it's like to be a little person -- patient info sessions that typically begin with a syllable-by-syllable pronunciation of the condition a-KON-dro-PLAY-sia.

"We've been through so much that we can easily explain, in our sleep, why we're small," says Max, whom the Grafs adopted in 1998 as a companion for Will. "We don't talk differently, we don't listen differently, we don't learn differently. We're just like any other human, except smaller."

Yes and no. Though each boy is in relatively good health, both have ongoing health issues common to dwarfism. Both brothers had spinal decompression surgery as toddlers to give their hourglass-shaped spinal cords more room. Will also has a shunt implanted on the top of his head to drain excess fluid on the brain to his stomach.

Despite that surgery -- and another one in 2002 that kept him in a cast for months -- Max, whose right foot drags slightly when he walks, has problems with pain in his back and hips; doctors think his left foot may be shorter than the other.

In their opinion, though, that's old hat; when a visitor asks to touch Will's shunt to see where it's located and what it feels like, Will doesn't flinch and even launches into a colorful story about the time it fell out. Max is equally blase about his foot, raising his foot to show the scuffs on his sandal.

He's less stable on this feet than Will and falls frequently. When this happens at school, it's not uncommon to see classmates get on their hands and knees on the floor beside Max so he can use their shoulders and backs to stand back up.

So in the boys' view, middle school has been going "good. Really good."

On the administrative side, having not one but two children with this special need is a first for the district, says principal Tom Ralston.

While achondroplasia is the most commonly diagnosed form of dwarfism, it's still relatively rare, occurring in 1 of every 26,000 to 40,000 births. The district has provided stools in the classrooms, lavatory and cafeteria to help the boys reach things that are too high and provided some latitude in gym class when performing some of the tougher physical activities. Because the crush of students in the halls can be overwhelming, they're also allowed to exit the middle school at the end of the school day from the sixth-grade hall instead of the main entrance to avoid the "traffic jam" of 330 kids trying to get to their buses at the same time.

"The boys really want to be treated as normally as possible and to be allowed to do things on their own as much as possible," says Mr. Ralston.

The great thing about Avonworth, says their mother, Suzanne, is that it's small enough to allow that to happen. In a larger school district, she explains, her sons would have experienced a whole new set of youngsters feeding into the system from different elementary schools. Here, it's the same group of students moving up from elementary to middle school. That includes older sister Laura, who's in eighth grade.

In a funny way, Mrs. Graf admits, she's actually relieved her sons no longer have to interact with the elementary schools' kindergartners and first graders, because they're the ones who always gawked or refused to believe her sons were in a particular class.

"It was always, 'You're too small to be in fifth grade or fourth grade or whatever,'" says Mrs. Graf, who, like her husband, John, graduated from Avonworth. The couple owns The Priory on the North Side.

"A couple of times, I had to approach the parent and gently say, your child doesn't understand what's going on, and point out how those comments hurt their feelings."

Such understanding and acceptance will be important as the year progresses, because middle school is a challenging time for all kids -- both physically and emotionally.

As many changes take place during middle school, Mr. Ralston points out, as in any three years of their entire lives. Not only are they learning how to deal with others and to control emotions, which can swing from happy to sad to angry at a moment's notice, but their social world is rapidly expanding, thanks to all those surging hormones. Throw in more rigorous schoolwork, "and it's very difficult for them," he says.

They've always adapted well and are looking forward to other activities beyond hitting the books. Will hopes to play on the intramural basketball team this year and Max, a Boy Scout, will soon be starting drum lessons.

They're quickly learning the dos and don'ts associated with being a middle schooler, not to mention their place in the pecking order.

Take, for instance, the bus, which they catch each morning at the corner across from their house. Last year as the reigning fifth-graders, they got first dibs on the highly coveted back seat. And make no mistake, everybody wanted it.

"It was always the funnest part of the bus drive because we hit a lot of bumps and it threw us out of our seats," recalls Max fondly.

Yet this year, following the advice of neighbor Cooper Kusbit, who's a year older and wiser, both know not to even think about venturing in that direction. At least not if they want to get to school in one piece.

"In the very back, there's this one kid," explains Max. "And everybody knows he has 'his' seat."

Dare to take it, he says with a sigh of acceptance, "and he'll shove you around."