In 1934, thirteen-year-old Marya and her younger brother, Georgi, set out alone on a long and arduous journey into Siberia to find their mother after she and their father are exiled for opposing Stalin.

Left an orphan after the influenza epidemic in British East Africa in 1918, thirteen-year-old Rachel is tricked into assuming a deceased neighbor's identity to travel to England, where her only dream is to return to Africa and rebuild her parents' mission hospital.

In 1837 ten-year-old Libby and her parents journey by covered wagon to the Michigan frontier, where they make themselves a new home near friendly Indians and other pioneers.

The community of Starvation Lake helps fourth-grader Dawn Zonder clean and repair an old house, hoping that her family will find the money to be able to move in.

Twelve-year-old Mary and her older brother and sister tend the family farm on Michigan's Mackinac Island while their father is away fighting the British in the War of 1812.

Even though he is the runt of the litter from her father's prize sled-racing dog, ten-year-old Rachel plans to train her puppy to become a champion racer and determines to track him down when he mysteriously disappears.

In Leningrad in 1941, when Russia and Germany are at war, fourteen-year-old Georgi vows to help his family and his city during the terrible siege.

In 1919, independent-minded fifteen-year-old Rosalind lives in India with her English parents, and when they fear she has fallen in with some rebellious types who believe in Indian self-government, she is sent "home" to London, where she has never been before and where her older brother died, to stay with her two aunts.

After their mother dies of typhoid, Verna and her younger sister Carlie move with their father, a psychiatrist, and stern Aunt Maude to an asylum for the mentally ill in early-twentieth-century Michigan, where new ideas in the treatment of mental illness are being proposed, but old prejudices still hold sway.

"Yatandou lives in a Mali village with her family and neighbors. And though she is only eight years old and would much rather play with her pet goat, she must sit with the women and pound millet kernels. To grind enough millet for one day's food, the women must pound the kernels with their pounding sticks for three hours. It is hard work, especially when one is eight years old. But as they work, the women dream of a machine that can grind the millet...