Contains six stories that follow the adventures of Rebecca Rubin, the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants in early twentieth-century New York, who aspires to be an actress.
Rebecca Rubin worries that her tenth birthday will be ruined because it falls during Passover, but her mother's cousin Max, an actor, takes her with him to a movie studio, where she makes friends with an actress and a set carpenter.
Nine-year-old Rebecca Rubin eagerly helps her cousin Ana, newly arrived from Russia, to adjust to life in New York City, but when their teacher says the two must sing together at a school assembly, Rebecca worries that her big moment will be ruined.
Ten-year-old Marie has been given a rare opportunity to dance at the Paris Op?ra, but her success is marred by the jealousy of her fellow-dancers and the poverty she sees around her in pre-Revolutionary Paris.
Presents photographs and first-person accounts of the September 11, 2001 World Trade Center attacks, and provides profiles of people related to the event including firefighters from Ladder Company 6 in New York.
While Rebecca Rubin helps her building's ailing superintendent take care of his homing pigeons, she puzzles over what to do with the Christmas centerpiece her teacher insisted she make but which has no place in her Jewish home.
