Jeremy finds out his father is dying of cancer and while he is trying to deal with it, he becomes friends with Tess, who knows what it is like to lose a parent.
When Emily's parents move to an eighteen-room house so that her four unpredictable cousins can live with them, life for Emily, an only child, is never again the same.
Presents the fictional diary of Victoria Cope, eleven years old in 1897, in which she describes events at her Canadian household when her mother becomes pregnant and the family takes in an orphan, or home girl, who quickly becomes dear to everyone's heart.
In 1916, in Uxbridge, Ontario, twelve-year-old Eliza, a Presbyterian minister's daughter, chronicles her family's experiences after her two brothers leave for Europe to fight in the war.
Patsy Small is teased by her older brothers and sister and they do not appreciate all the things she does for them. When she comes down with the chicken pox, her father brings home something just for her, and Patsy plans a little revenge of her own.
Gruntle decides to leave the city to be a "real" pig like her grandfather, but she discovers that rolling in muck and eating swill and living without any books to read are not for her.
