In 1881, fifteen-year-old Tad, an orphan, helps a girl attempting to get a mighty Indian elephant to friends in Nebraska, all the while pursued by two unscrupulous villains who claim that the elephant is theirs.
A chance photograph taken for the school Camera Club draws Charlie into the emotionally troubled lives of his classmate Jennifer's family, especially that of her younger brother who harbors an astounding secret.
To escape a depressed mother and her mother's hostile boyfriend, angry young Janis joins the rock group Kelp and develops her own strength of character while fighting to survive in the contemporary music world.
Robert, with his best friend, Tom, and sister, Emma, attempt to save the other survivors from the strange parallel world before winter sets in and destroys them all.
Tom, his friend Robert, and Robert's sister Emma attempt to rescue a strange girl Robert believes is the counterpart of Lorn, a tiny person he met during his own ordeal as a miniature copy of himself.
Robert wakes up scratched and naked in a dark forest, remembering only that he had been on an airplane returning from vacation with his parents, and soon realizes he is not far from home, but that he has somehow become very small--shorter than a blade of grass--and the distance to his house seems impossible to travel.
