Although Juno, a Korean American boy, cannot read the letter he receives from his grandmother in Seoul, he understands what it means from the photograph and dried flower that are enclosed and decides to send a similar letter back to her.
Fourteen-year-old Hope visits her new foster mother's Nebraska farm and, through old letters, a diary, and stories, gets a vivid picture of the past in the voices of four girls her age who lived there in 1869, 1900, 1936, and 1960.
The summer before seventh grade, Venola Mae Cutright, Belington, West Virginia's best newspaper carrier, writes a series of humorous letters to her best friend away at camp, the Ultra Underwater Flea Circus Company, and her newspaper boss.
High school sophomore Elisa is used to observing and going unnoticed except when classmates ask her to write love notes for them, but a teacher's recognition of her talent, a "client's" desire for her friendship, a love of ice skating, and her parents' marital problems draw her out of herself.
Seventeen-year-old Tal Levine of Jerusalem, despondent over the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, puts her hopes for peace in a bottle and asks her brother, a military nurse in the Gaza Strip, to toss it into the sea, leading ultimately to friendship and understanding between her and an "enemy.".
Twelve-year-old Tom learns about honor when his teacher accuses him of not doing a homework assignment, and while working at his grandfather's dog training business the following summer, he has an opportunity to show what he learned by deciding whether or not to give up a puppy he has become attached to that is promised to someone else.
