As James Madison's aide during the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, young Jared Mifflin experiences a summer filled with adventure, intrigue, and romance.
With his ability to travel through time using baseball cards and photographs, thirteen-year-old Joe and his mother go back to 1863 to ask Abner Doubleday whether he invented baseball, but instead find themselves in the middle of the Battle of Gettysburg.
In 1862, as William Burd fights in the Civil War, he exchanges letters with his sister, Sallie, who is also writing to Confederate and Union generals asking about their horses in order to write a book.
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 1863 twelve-year-old Anna, disguised as a boy and accompanied by her younger brother Jed, leaves their Pennsylvania home and makes the difficult journey to join their wounded father in Winchester, Virginia, where they find themselves in danger from Confederate troops.
Ann, a young girl in eighteenth-century Williamsburg, wants to become a doctor like her father, but she is not allowed even to study Latin or mathematics.
In 1849, twelve-year-old California Morning Whipple, who renames herself Lucy, is distraught when her mother moves the family from Massachusetts to a rough California mining town.
Twelve-year-old Elspeth Monro, a Scottish settler and weaver's apprentice on the North Carolina frontier in 1775, must find out who is betraying her Loyalist family during the months before the start of the Revolutionary War.
In 1905, ten-year-old Billy is taken from an orphanage to live with an aunt and an uncle of whose existence he was previously unaware. He enjoys his first taste of family life until his work in a coal mine and his involvement with a union bring trouble. He then joins a circus in hopes of finding his father.
Erika and her family moved from Hungary to California in search of gold, but in 1849, when they have trouble paying their rent, Erica goes to work tending horses for their landlord and forms a bond with one of her charges.
With their father away and their mother traumatized by some unknown event, eleven-year-old Polly and her younger sister are left to take care of themselves and their prairie homestead.
Schooled in the lessons of etiquette for young ladies of 1854, Miss Jane Peck of Philadelphia finds little use for manners during her long sea voyage to the Pacific Northwest and while living among the American traders and Chinook Indians of Washington Territory.
Ten-year-old Bud, a motherless boy living in Flint, Michigan, during the Great Depression, escapes a bad foster home and sets out in search of the man he believes to be his father--the renowned bandleader, H.E. Calloway of Grand Rapids.
In 1934, eleven-year-old Charlotte and her mother move to tiny Valley Junction, Missouri, where Charlotte befriends an eccentric old woman in spite of her mother's and others' warnings.
In 1803 in Ohio, two young brothers are left to finish the log cabin and guard the land while their father goes back to Pennsylvania to fetch their mother and younger siblings.
After having been a slave on Carter's Grove plantation near Williamsburg, Virginia, since childhood, Caesar finally finds a way to plan his own future.
Left orphaned and alone shortly after her French family arrives in the New World, young Marguerite Ledoux becomes an indentured servant and must survive the dangers of hostile Indians, the bitter, hungry winter of 1743, and the people in Maine who treat her with suspicion because she is a "foreigner."
When eleven-year-old Cat Kinsey builds a secret hideout to escape her unhappy homelife, she slowly gets to know a poor family who have come to California after losing their Texas home to the dust storms of the 1930s.
Young Charlotte and her family spend a year in the 1870's on Isle Royale in Lake Superior, discovering its natural beauty and folk history through adventures with local characters and friends.
As a twelve-year-old Welsh immigrant carries a motherless baby along the Mormon Trail in 1856, she comes to love the baby as her own and fear the day the baby's father will reclaim her.
When twelve-year old Rebecca Carter's father brings a Native American accused of murder into their 1812 Ohio settlement town, Rebecca, witnessing the town's reaction to the Indian, struggles with the idea that an innocent man may be convicted and sentenced to death.
Twelve-year-old Rose sets out to prove her brother's innocence when he is accused of shooting a politician during a Wild West show performance in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1886.
After being taken in by Captain Taylor and his wife in Kansas, twelve-year-old Mike Kelly and his friend Todd Blakely join the Union army as musicians and see the horrors of war firsthand in Missouri.
In 1881, the scrappy, rough-and-tumble baseball team in a California mining town enlists the help of a quick-witted twelve-year-old orphan and the notorious outlaw Billy the Kid to win a big game against the National League Champion Chicago White Stockings.
In 1939, unable to find regular jobs because of the Great Depression, long-time friends Cal Chin and Barney Young tour the country as members of a Chinese American basketball team.
When twelve-year-old Phillip and his sister move with their parents from Plymouth to Boston in 1634, they encounter mysterious Indians and survive narrow escapes.
In 1754, with her own parents taken captive, twelve-year-old Rebecca must confront her fear and hatred of the Abenaki when a boy raised by members of that tribe is brought to the fort at Charleston, New Hampshire, just before a series of thefts occurs.
Twelve-year-old Emily must hold down her job working twelve-hour days in a garment factory in order to keep from starving. A story that includes historical interludes about the working conditions in factories at the turn of the century.
Twelve-year-old Clyde Thomason's older brother is a guard on the Freedom Train, which is carrying the Bill of Rights and other documents throughout the country in 1948, but Clyde is also learning about rights and freedom as he is saved from a beating by an African American boy, and later returns the favor when men in their Atlanta suburb decide to show the "Nigras" their place.
In 1816, twelve-year-old Mem's new home in the wilderness of western New York is disrupted when the birth of another baby sends her mother into "spells" that disconnect her from reality.
In Kentucky, during the Civil War, the twelve-year-old slave Gabriel, contends with a cruel new horse trainer and skirmishes with Confederate soldiers as he pursues his dream of becoming a jockey.
In 1925, after witnessing the violent actions of some gangsters, twelve-year-old Emily accompanies her older sister on a trip to a luxurious hotel on the New Jersey shore but worries that the gangsters have come to the same hotel. Includes historical notes on the time period.
During the Depression, Gunther Grunt buys a new car with the money his wife has been saving to send their bright twelve-year-old daughter to college, beginning a chain of events that teaches the Grunts the value of their family.
In 1815, while traveling by covered wagon to settle in the wilderness of western New York, eleven-year-old Mem experiences a flood and separation from her family.
Eleven-year-old Margo fulfills a class assignment by writing a letter to Eleanor Roosevelt asking for help to save her family's home during the Great Depression.
In 1948, nine-year-old Katy Sue's mother dies suddenly, and she and her family spend the next year trying to recover from their loss, assisted by her Aunt Katherine, who quits her teaching job to help out on their Iowa farm.
An abridged version of the story of young Caroline Quiner, who would grow up to become Laura Ingalls Wilder's mother, and her family surviving their first year without Father in the frontier town of Brookfield, Wisconsin.
In Pittsburgh in 1933, sixth-grader Mike Costa notices a connection between several strange occurrences, but the only way he can find out the truth about what's happening is to be nice to the class bully. Includes historical facts.
When her wounded brother returns from battle, twelve-year-old Mary must get help for him without telling her father, a wealthy Tory, who has disowned his son for joining General Washington's Continental Army.
Due to a misunderstanding over her involvement in a botched robbery, Maude, with younger sister Sallie, hides out at the home of an uncle, but when she is discovered and arrested, the orphaned sisters flee, trying to clear Maude's name.
While staying with her Aunt Millie in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky in the summer of 1934, Kit tries to discover who is sabotaging a visiting folklore researcher.
Morning Girl, who loves the day, and her younger brother Star Boy, who loves the night, take turns describing their life on an island in pre-Columbian America; in Morning Girl's last narrative, she witnesses the arrival of the first Europeans to her world.
In the Indiana wilderness in 1821, twelve-year-old Nelly Vandorn and her older brother hold fast to their rough frontier ways when their father brings home a fancy new city wife not long after burying their mother.
During the Civil War, a seventeen-year-old Union soldier must adjust to army life, with the additional complications peculiar to the region where the Shenandoah and Potomac Rivers come together at Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.
As the only girl in a Finnish American family of seven brothers, May Amelia Jackson resents being expected to act like a lady while growing up in Washington state in 1899.
Nine-year-old Elizabeth keeps a journal of her experiences in the New World as she encounters Indians, suffers hunger and the death of friends, and helps her father build their first home.
In a series of poems, fifteen-year-old Billie Jo relates the hardships of living on her family's wheat farm in Oklahoma during the dust bowl years of the Depression.
Only twelve-year-old Colleen knows that her baby sister died just after she was born and that Colleen put another baby in her place, until the baby's father shows up and makes trouble for her and her family on the South Dakota prairie in the 1860s.
In 1735 in New York City, a young printer's apprentice learns about the importance of freedom of speech when the printer Peter Zenger is arrested and tried for writing articles criticizing the government.
In 1936 twelve-year-old Rosie Pearl Bush and her family of migrants endure the hardships of the Great Depression as they find work picking fruit in the California Valley.
In the late 16th century, fifteen-year-old Andrew leaves school in England and must prove himself as a page to Sir Walter Raleigh before embarking for Virginia, where he helps to establish relations with the Indians.
In 1817, after her mother has died and her father abandoned his children, thirteen-year-old Mem searches for a new home for Joshua, herself, and their little sister.
Living on the nineteenth-century Indiana frontier with his parents and irritable older sister Louise, six-year-old Beansie dreads his first day of school, but his resilience surprises even his sister.
In 1611, ten-year-old Elizabeth continues a journal of her experiences living in Jamestown, as her brother Caleb rejoins the family, a new strict governor comes to the colony, and her father considers remarriage.
In addition to having to cope with major changes in her family, twelve-year-old Susannah, who lives in seventeenth-century Maryland, struggles with her promise to keep the secret of a runaway indentured servant.
In New York City in 1914, eleven-year-old Susan encounters a mystery through an independent-minded female boarder and becomes involved in the growing suffrage movement.
When her family moves to Philadelphia's Society Hill neighborhood in 1866, Addy discovers that her new home holds dangerous secrets--including one connected to the North Carolina plantation she had escaped from only two years earlier.
In 1773, twelve-year-old Silence works to please her mother through household chores and weekly etiquette lessons in hopes of spending time with her beloved horse, Lily, while the men of Boston, including her Loyalist father and brother, discuss a possible war over taxation without representation.
A boy who grew up in the slums of late nineteenth-century Chicago runs away, joins the cavalry, and fights with General Custer in the battle of Little Big Horn.
In 1900, as a family of Finnish immigrants begins farming on the edge of a Minnesota lake, Matti works as a store clerk, teaches English, and works on the homestead, striving to get out of his older brother's shadow and earn their father's respect.
Fifteen-year-old Barry O'Neill, traveling from Ireland to America on the maiden voyage of the Titanic, finds his life endangered when the ship hits an iceberg and begins to sink.
In 1872, while journeying from Texas to Kansas, a Civil War veteran named Melvin meets a sixteen-year-old orphan, another Melvin, and they give each other nicknames and become partners and traveling companions on an exciting adventure.
When an archaeologist's priceless jewel goes missing during a 1906 ocean liner voyage to Europe, eleven-year-old Samantha tries to discover which of the first-class passengers is the thief.
Despite the opposition of the owner of the Red Rock Runner railroad in 1893, the new settlers of Florence, Oklahoma, are determined to build a real town.
After their mother abandons them during the Great Depression, eleven-year-old Tennyson Fontaine and her little sister Hattie are sent to live with their eccentric Aunt Henrietta in a decaying plantation house outside of New Orleans.
In 1912, thirteen-year-old Albert considers his younger sister a pest, but things change when they travel with their mother and uncle aboard the Titanic and are caught up in its tragic sinking.
In the early 1700s, twelve-year-old Suzette, an Ojibwa-French girl, hopes that her father will win the fur-trapping contest so that he can quit being a voyageur and stay with his family year-round, but when he is accused of stealing, Suzette must use her knowledge of both French and Ojibwa ways to find the real thief.
In 1908, eleven-year-old Innie joins the library club at a settlement house that serves immigrant families of Boston's North End, but when items and money disappear from the settlement house, Innie's past as a troublemaker puts her under suspicion.
In late nineteenth-century California, when Chinese immigrants are being driven out or even killed for fear they will take jobs from whites, fifteen-year-old Eliza Jane McCully defies the townspeople and her lighthouse-keeper father to help a Chinese boy who has been kind to her.
Alone in the frontier wilderness in the winter of 1839 while his father is recovering from an injury, eleven-year-old Nathan runs afoul of the renegade killer known as Weasel and makes a surprising discovery about the concept of revenge.
In 1791 after her family's journey from Pennsylvania, ten-year-old Lizzie suffers from the disease of asthma in her new home in the Southwest Territory (present-day Tennessee).
Twelve-year-old Sam, a passenger on the Titanic's maiden sea voyage, volunteers to help care for the dogs in the ocean liner's kennel and becomes fast friends with the Irish setter of J. Bruce Ismay, the ship's owner.
In 1861 twelve-year-old Truth, a Quaker girl from Indiana, is staying with relatives who run a North Carolina station of the Underground Railroad, when her world is changed by the beginning of the Civil War.
As the French and Indian War rages in October of 1759, Saxso, a fourteen-year-old Abenaki boy, pursues the English rangers who have attacked his village and taken his mother and sisters hostage.
Her mother's death and a year-long drought has made life difficult for twelve-year-old Rachel and her family on their farm in the Dakotas, but when she learns that her father plans to get married again, it is almost more than Rachel can bear.
