In 1941, circumstances bring together Brick, a boy from New York's apple country, and Mariel, a young girl made shy by her bout with polio, and the two make a journey from Brooklyn back to help Brick's elderly neighbors save their apple crop and to help Mariel learn about her past.

During the Great Depression, while their father is away looking for work, eight-year-old Patrick and thirteen-year-old Roy create a machine to help their mother make ends meet, even as she is helping tramps.

In 1974 at her new San Francisco school, nine-year-old Julie does not want to tell her class about her parents' divorce, or to tell her sister about messing up her school assignment, but when she breaks her finger playing basketball and her whole family rallies around her, she realizes the importance of telling the truth.

Throughout the twentieth century, Miss Kanagawa, one of fifty-eight dolls made to serve as ambassadors from Japan to the United States, travels the country learning to love while changing the lives of those who need her.

When the influenza epidemic of 1918 comes to Vermont, eleven-year-old Margaret, who has always wanted to be a physician, finds out what doctoring is like.

In 1945, ten-year-old Molly does not want to share her puppy Bennett with her brother but finds she might need to change her mind.

Cousins Patrick and Beth work to protect runaway slave Sally as they travel by train with President-elect Abraham Lincoln through northern New York state in 1861 aboard The Lincoln Special, getting assistance from Mrs. Mary Todd Lincoln and her son Willie along the way.

An abridged version of the story of five-year-old Charlotte Tucker, who would grow up to become the grandmother of Laura Ingalls Wilder, as she feels the effects of the War of 1812 while living with her family near Boston.

From a smelly watering hole deep in the heart of the Serengeti to the ferocious clamor of the Colosseum, join Julius Zebra and his motley menagerie of friends as they gear up to be gladiators! Only if they win the love of the Roman crowds will they win back their freedom. But do Julius and his pals have what it takes to succeed in a world where only the meanest and toughest survive?