In 1868, John Bardsley, an immigrant from England, brought one thousand sparrows from his home country back to Philadelphia, where he hoped they would help save the trees from the inch-worms that were destroying them. Based on a true story.
In eighteenth-century Korea, after Sang-hee's father injures his ankle, Sang-hee attempts to take over the task of lighting the evening fire which signals to the palace that all is well. Includes historical notes.
Quila and her father, living alone in a remote Maine lighthouse in the 1850's, find their lives profoundly changed when a baby washes ashore and they decide to keep her as part of their family.
When the influenza epidemic of 1918 comes to Vermont, eleven-year-old Margaret, who has always wanted to be a physician, finds out what doctoring is like.
In the late 1800s in Kentucky, Amie McBee and her four sisters both fear and torment the reclusive and seemingly sinister Mr. Tominski, but their father continues to provide for his needs.
In the Jim Crow South, a young African-American girl decides to share the secret of her and her mother's fishing success with their needy white neighbors.
In the winter of 1764, after Kaya and her sister are kidnapped from their Nez Perc? village by enemy horse raiders, she tries to find a way to escape back home. Includes historical notes on education and learning among the Nez Perc? Indians.
Katje, a cat in fifteenth-century Holland, loses her happy place in her master's home after he gets married and has a baby, but she gets a chance to prove her worth when a threatening storm comes.
Fictional diary entries recount the true-life efforts of Louisa May Alcott's family to establish a utopian community known as Fruitlands in Massachusetts in 1843.
