A young disabled girl and her brother are evacuated from London to the English countryside during World War II, where they find life to be much sweeter away from their abusive mother. "Nine-year-old Ada has never left her one-room apartment. Her mother is too humiliated by Ada's twisted foot to let her outside. So when her little brother Jamie is shipped out of London to escape the war, Ada doesn't waste a minute--she sneaks out to join him. So begins...

Eleven-year-old Ada's clubfoot has been fixed at last, and she knows now that she's not what her mother said she was - damaged and deranged. But soon Ada learns that she's not a daughter anymore either. Who is she now? World War II rages on, and Ada and her brother move with their guardian, Susan, into a cottage with the iron-face Lady Thorton and her daughter. Life in the crowded home is tense. Then Ruth moves in. Ruth, a Jewish girl, from Germany....

"During World War II, twelve-year old Miriam secretly spirits other Jewish people out of Nazi-occupied France after being separated from her family and forced into hiding"--

In 1788, eleven-year-old Isabelle, living with her lacemaker grandmother and mother near the palace of Versailles, becomes close friends with Marie Antoinette's daughter, Princess Therese, and finds their relationship complicated not only by their different social class but by the growing political unrest and resentment of the French people.

Ten-year-old Lizzy Baker loves her life in the Southwest Territory. Her family's farm is doing well, and her mother earns extra money by weaving. But at harvest time Lizzy suffers bouts of sickness. And each year is worse than the last. The doctor and the mid-wife say her terrible coughing is asthma. But they don't know the cause, and their potions and prescriptions aren't much help. Just when Lizzy thinks she can no longer struggle for another breath,...