The two weeks before Christmas are filled with activity as Samantha finishes her homemade presents and makes preparations for visiting relatives.

After escaping from a plantation in North Carolina, Addy and her mother arrive in Philadelphia, where Addy goes to school and learns a lesson in true friendship.

In 1934 Kit finds that she has hard lessons to learn about the Depression both at home, where she is helping her mother run a boarding house while her father looks for a new job, and at school, where a fight spoils the preparations for the Thanksgiving pageant.

In 1764, Kaya greatly admires a courageous and kind young woman in her Nez Percé village and wants to be worthy of her respect. Includes historical notes on the winter activities of the Nez Percé Indians, including ceremonies and crafts.

Addy and Harriet feud over everything, including fund-raising plans to help the families of freed slaves, but tragedy finally forces them to stop fighting and work together.

When she discovers that Nellie and her sisters have been sent to an orphanage, Samantha, now living with her aunt and uncle in New York City, tries to help her friends as much as she can.

When her family moves to Philadelphia's Society Hill neighborhood in 1866, Addy discovers that her new home holds dangerous secrets--including one connected to the North Carolina plantation she had escaped from only two years earlier. Includes a brief overview of the experiences of African Americans during Reconstruction, the period immediately following the Civil War.

In 1904, nine-year-old Samantha, an orphan living with her wealthy grandmother, and her servant friend Nellie have a midnight adventure when they try to find out what has happened to the seamstress who suddenly left her job.

"Rebecca Rubin is growing up in a big Russian-Jewish family in New York City in 1914. She wants to be an actress--but her parents and grandparents have traditional ideas of what a young lady should do, and acting isn't one of them! Can Rebecca find a way to follow the traditions she loves, without giving up her dreams?"--Container.

"Claudie is traveling from Harlem to Georgia with Mama and Cousin Sidney to meet her grandmother and cousins for the first time. She hopes that learning her family's story will inspire her for the variety show she's planning to raise money to save the boardinghouse her family lives in. Claudie's grandmother tells her a legend from slavery times called "The People Could Fly." In it, an old man whispers magic words, and the enslaved people grow wings...