As spring arrives on Gardam Street, there are surprises in store for each Penderwick, from neighbor Nick Geiger's expected return from the war to Batty's new dog-walking business, but her plans to use her profits to surprise her family on her eleventh birthday go astray.

Kylie Jean Carter plans to sing in the annual Fourth of July Jubilee talent show.

In Rippling Creek, Louisiana, in 1948, eleven-year-old Tate writes letters to her favorite country singer, sharing her dreams of becoming a singer and revealing that her mother is in prison.

"When Pheobe's sister, Okalee, drowns in the river during their annual spring celebration, Phoebe is wracked with guilt to the point that she loses her singing voice"--

While Gwin, a Fetcher, and her family defy the Devouts by sharing song and story, the Oyster's crew and the Sunkers continue fighting to bring light back to the dark world.

"Twelve-year-old Delphernia Undersea has spent her whole life in the cloister, hidden from sea and sky by a dome of stone and the laws of Blightsend. Outside, the Masters - all boys and men - play music. Inside, the turnaway girls silently, silently make that music into gold. Making shimmers, Mother Nine calls it. But Delphernia can't make shimmer. She would rather sing that stay silent. When a Master who doesn't act like a Master comes to the skydoor,...

"It’s 1893, and Lorraine Williams can’t wait to attend the Chicago World’s Fair and see her idol, the Black opera singer Sissieretta Jones. But when activist and writer Ida B. Wells urges Black Americans to boycott the fair, Lorraine’s father forbids Lorraine from going. After all, there is no exhibition about the progress that the Black community has made since Emancipation, and the fair has lacked Black representation since it was first...