Initially delighted when she receives an invitation to wealthy and elegant Lily Pomeray's house party, Meg is mortified to learn that she has not been invited as a guest but rather to help make the costumes for a masquerade.
As Christmas approaches, Jo March finds herself unable to control her quick temper even though it causes strife in the family and threatens the publication of her first story in the newspaper.
As each of the four March sisters turns ten, she is invited by Aunt March at Christmastime to discuss who will receive an heirloom, an old cameo brooch, and thus each girl contemplates her role in the family.
As the family prepares for Christmas, Beth befriends a beautiful but sickly pony that strays into the March's yard and tries to keep it from being taken to Boston to be sold as a "useless beast.".
Amy finds herself in a quandary when, after two of her paintings are accepted for the Christmas festival artist contest, she discovers that one of her entries is actually a work done by Marmee.
At the request of her sixth grade teacher, Edwina Rose Sachs records events in the lives of her Polish immigrant family and their friends living in Brooklyn in the early 1900s.
A family travels from the big woods of Wisconsin to a new home on the prairie, where they build a house, meet neighboring Indians, dig a well, and fight a prairie fire.
Eight-year-old Maurice's struggle to protect his bedroom full of treasured "junk" from unsympathetic parents undergoes a transformation when the family moves to the country.
