When twelve-year-old Hugo, an orphan living and repairing clocks within the walls of a Paris train station in 1931, meets a mysterious toyseller and his goddaughter, his undercover life and his biggest secret are jeopardized.
When seemingly unrelated and strange events start to happen and a precious Vermeer painting disappears, eleven-year-olds Petra and Calder combine their talents to solve an international art scandal.
Jack and Annie travel to Vienna, Austria, in 1762, where they meet the young Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and his sister and help save the budding genius' life.
Uses the form of a blues song to share the story of the year-long bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama, sparked by seamstress Rosa Parks' refusal to give up her seat on a city bus to a white passenger in 1955, which resulted in a repeal of the Jim Crow segregation laws.
During the 1967 school year, on Wednesday afternoons when all his classmates go to either Catechism or Hebrew school, seventh-grader Holling Hoodhood stays in Mrs. Baker's classroom where they read the plays of William Shakespeare and Holling learns much of value about the world he lives in.
Jack and Annie travel 500 years back in time to Florence, Italy, and spend a day helping Leonardo da Vinci in the hope of learning another secret of happiness.
Stuck in summer school while his friends enjoy a "Passport to Hawaii," Hank needs to earn an A on an oral report about Einstein in order to participate in Magik 3's talent show act at the luau extravaganza.
Fred, Sam, and Joe get a chance to sail with Leif Eriksson when they accidentally transport themselves to Canada, circa 1000 A.D., at the time of the Vikings' arrival in North America.
