Meggy Swann, a girl who walks with the aid of two sticks, arrives in Elizabethan London, along with her goose Louise, to stay with her father who really does not want her, and while he pursues his dream of transforming base metal into gold, Meggy undergoes a transformation herself.

In 1975 after American troops pull out of Vietnam, a thirteen-year-old boy and his beloved elephant escape into the jungle when the Viet Cong attack his village.

In 1942, an eleven-year-old girl who longs to be a pilot and her family try to manage their lives in Rhode Island when the father goes to fight in World War II.

When World War I breaks out, nine-year-old Anna thinks of a way to save her family's beloved New York City doll repair shop. Includes brief author's note about the history of the Madame Alexander doll, a glossary, and timeline.

Rescued from the gallows in 1850s London, young orphan and thief Mary Quinn is offered a place at Miss Scrimshaw's Academy for Girls where she is trained to be part of an all-female investigative unit called The Agency and, at age seventeen, she infiltrates a rich merchant's home in hopes of tracing his missing cargo ships.

In 1776 Boston, twelve-year-old Daniel Prescott enjoys assuming his father's role in taking care of his mother and sister, as well as his work as a spy and messenger for the American revolutionaries, but the pleasure ends when he witnesses the horrors of war firsthand, and learns that a trusted patriot is actually a British spy.

Apsley "Cherry" Cherry-Garrard shares his adventures as the youngest member of Robert Scott's expedition to Antarctica in the early twentieth century, during which he and Edward Wilson try to learn the evolutionary history of emperor penguins. Includes historical notes.

Brothers Willie and Taddie share stories about their father, Abraham Lincoln, from 1859 to 1865.

In 1939 Sweden, two Jewish sisters wait for their parents to join them in fleeing the Nazis in Austria, but while eight-year-old Nellie settles in quickly, twelve-year-old Stephie feels stranded at the end of the world, with a foster mother who is as cold and unforgiving as the island on which they live.

In 1897, Robert Peary took six Eskimos from their homes and "presented" them to the American Museum of Natural History in New York as a living exhibit. Two of them were father and son: Qisuk ("Smiler") and Minik. This is Minik's story.

After being sold to a cruel couple in New York City, a slave named Isabel spies for the rebels during the Revolutionary War.

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.

During the Revolutionary War, a young woman named Deborah Sampson disguises herself as a man in order to serve in the Continental Army.

When the landlord's wife dies of the Plague, Brind, the dogboy--now fourteen-years-old--and Aurelie, the maid are blamed and banished, and take two of the dogs to find a safe haven, only to learn the sickness is everywhere.

Most people know the name John Wilkes Booth, but few likely have heard of his elder brother Edwin. Find out about the brothers through first-hand accounts. Learn how alike and how different they were, and how each made a lasting impression on American history.

In 1850s Pittsburgh, thirteen-year-old Owen leaves his younger brother and sneaks aboard a circus housed in a riverboat, where he befriends a freed slave, learns to work with elephants, and finally comes to terms with the choices he has made in his difficult life.

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.

Follows the fortunes of a German immigrant family through nine generations, beginning in 1845, as they experience American life and play baseball.

Two sisters, aged ten and twelve, are accused of witchcraft in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1692 and await trial in a miserable prison while their mother desperately searches for some way to obtain their freedom.

Traveling to the New World in 1606 as the page to Captain John Smith, twelve-year-old orphan Samuel Collier settles in the new colony of James Town, where he must quickly learn to distinguish between friend and foe.

Moose Flanagan, who lives on Alcatraz along with his family and the families of the other prison guards, is frightened when he discovers that noted gangster Al Capone, a prisoner there, wants a favor in return for the help that he secretly gave Moose.

In the middle of the night, The Crosswhites—including young Sadie—must flee the Kentucky plantation they work on. Dear January has been beaten and killed by the plantation master, and they fear who may be next. But Sadie must leave behind her most valuable possession, the wooden sparrow carved for her by January. Through the Underground Railroad, the Crosswhites make the slow and arduous journey to Marshall, Michigan, where they finally live in freedom.

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.

While her tyrannical family is out of favor in Italy, young Catherine de Medici is raised in convents, then in 1533, when she is fourteen, her uncle, Pope Clement VII, arranges for her marriage to prince Henri of France, who is destined to become king.

A scrapbook kept by a young black girl details her experiences and those of the older white woman, "Miss Bet," who had freed her and her family, sent her north from Richmond to get an education, and then worked to bring an end to slavery. Based on the life of Elizabeth Van Lew.

After being taught in a boarding school run by whites that Navajo is a useless language, Ned Begay and other Navajo men are recruited by the Marines to become Code Talkers, sending messages during World War II in their native tongue.

At age twenty-one, partially-blind, lonely but spirited Annie Sullivan travels from Massachusetts to Alabama to try and teach six-year-old Helen Keller, deaf and blind since age two, self-discipline and communication skills. Includes historical notes and timeline.

Living in the shadow of a Texas cemetery, twelve-year-old Winnie Grace struggles to keep the Spanish influenza of 1918 from touching her family--her coffin-building father, her troubled mother, and her two baby sisters.