Always overshadowed by his competitive older brother, especially in their work as mule drivers on the Erie Canal, fourteen-year-old Howard finally finds the courage to pursue his dreams of becoming an educator after he learns about sign language and teaches it to his deaf friend in nineteenth-century New York State.
Rat brothers Louie and Ralphie Ratso try to prove they can be as rough and tough as their father in the Big City, but every time they try to show how tough they are, they end up accidentally doing good deeds instead.
Danny, Robert, Mike, and their friends form a club, collect and display a dinosaur bone, tadpoles, and a king snake that the brothers found on vacation, as well as creatures from their neighborhood.
Three little Swedish boys want some butter for their bread, but the cow will give no milk because she has no fresh green grass, and there is no grass because the sun has not been shining.
Orphaned brothers Prosper and Bo, having run away from their cruel aunt and uncle, decide to hide out in Venice where they fall in with the Thief Lord, a thirteen-year-old boy who leads a crime ring of street children.
When they arrive in Fairyland to settle down and build their own houses, everyone they meet warns the three little superpigs about the Big Bad Wolf, but only one of them pays much attention--and when the Wolf comes looking for a pork dinner, it is his brick house that saves his foolish brothers and earns them all the status of superheroes in Fairyland (which is what they have always dreamed of being).
