"Elena lives with her mother and siblings in a small village in Guatemala and tries to make time to improve her reading as she helps her mother with daily chores"--Provided by the publisher.
In 1945, when young Thomas, his mother, and his new baby brother leave war-torn England to join his stepfather, an American soldier named Jack, in Chicago, Thomas finds a way to give courage to a fellow traveler on the Queen Mary. Includes historical note about war brides.
Like his ancestors before him, ten-year-old Eduardo enjoys going into Ecuador's rain forest to collect Brazil nuts with his father, but when the wild tamarins that always accompany them disappear Eduardo is determined to find them.
In Japan, as a provincial governor, his wife, and daughter Yuki, followed by 1,000 attendants, travel the historic Tokaido Road to the Shogun's palace in Edo, Yuki keeps up with her lessons by writing poems describing the journey.
Pierre, a ten-year-old boy who longs to cook, is deemed too young by his parents, owners of La Bonne Vache restaurant in a small French town, but while out riding his bicycle, he encounters an important food critic on his way to the restaurant, and knows he must take the opportunity to prove himself as a chef.
While eight-year-old Zulviya labors over a loom, weaving a rug just as generations of the women in her Turkoman family have done, she is comforted by imagining a new pattern inspired by the landscape of Afghanistan.
Ten-year-old Megan Brady tells of her family's lifestyle, spending summers traveling in a caravan through the Irish countryside getting work where they can, and winters in Dublin so the children can attend school.
