When her parents ask her to spend a month helping Mrs. Hata, Rinko is sure her summer vacation will be ruined. One disaster follows another during her visit, but Rinko discovers that things are not always as bad as they seem.

When twelve-year-old Dana Shannon starts to strip away wallpaper in her family's old house, she's unprepared for the surprise that awaits her. A hidden room -- containing a human skeleton How did such a thing get there? And why was the tiny room sealed up?
With the help of a diary found in the room, Dana learns her house was once a station on the Underground Railroad. The young woman whose remains Dana discovered was Lizbet Charles, a conductor and former slave. As the scene shifts between Dana's world and 1856, the story of the families that lived in the house unfolds. But as pieces of...

"Sometimes a man has to risk everything to do what's right. Doing it is what makes him a man."
Thirteen-year-old Michael knows he is lucky. Few slaves in 1805 Charleston are where they want to be. But Michael works on the docks and ships in Charleston Harbor, close to the seas he longs to sail. Life seems good. But when Michael's protective mistress dies, everything changes, and Michael's friend Jim encourages him to run away. Michael is torn. Should he risk everything for a chance at freedom in some unknown place? Or should he stay -- is staying safe worth staying a slave?

October 1835. Patience Goodspeed, almost thirteen years old, departs from Nantucket aboard her father's whaling ship. Between kitchen duty and whale blubber stench, this voyage is far from a pleasure cruise. At least Papa lets Patience assist the ship's navigator since she's so good at calculations.
But the smooth sailing doesn't last long. Mutinous mates maroon most of the crew, including Patience's father and brother, on a deserted island. Can Patience rescue everyone before it's too late?

A year they'll never forget
Ten-year-old Frederika (Fred for short) doesn't have much faith that the new teacher in town will last very long. After all, they never do. Most teachers who come to their one-room schoolhouse in remote, Alaska leave at the first smell of fish, claiming that life there is just too hard.
But Miss Agnes is different -- she doesn't get frustrated with her students, and she throws away old textbooks and reads Robin Hood instead For the first time, Fred and her classmates begin to enjoy their lessons and learn to read and write -- but will Miss Agnes...

ABBY IS FREE FROM SLAVERY BUT NOT FROM THE SECRETS OF HER PAST...
It's 1865 in the conquered South and things are not as they were before the war. Thirteen-year-old Abby Joyner still lives on the plantation where she was raised but she and her grandparents are free now and continue on for a small salary.
One thing is the same as it has always been, though -- Abby does not know what became of her mother. Why won't anyone tell her? Abby is determined to find the truth behind her disappearance. But answers are few and she is about to discover that, like freedom, the truth is harder to...

Award-winning novelist Fletcher brings readers back to 1886, when Chinese immigrants flooded into California towns like Crescent City, home to Eliza Jane McCully. When Eliza's life is saved by a young Chinese boy, her perceptions of the immigrants begins to change.

In the spring of 1865 the Civil War has finally ended. Men are coming home. Families are being reunited -- except for Tyler's. His father is going with a band of men to Mexico, where they will regroup, rearm, and continue the fight against the Yankees. Tyler is stunned. For four years he's dreamed of seeing his father again, and he can't let go of that dream. There's only one thing Tyler can do -- go get his father and bring him home.
Tyler starts his trek from Missouri to the Rio Grande alone, but he quickly gains a companion -- a strange dog made mean by cruelty but tamed by hunger and...

"I WANTED TO SERVE, TO BE PART OF THIS THING MY FATHER HAD GIVEN HIS LIFE FOR. I DIDN'T WANT THE WAR TO END, AND ALL I'D BE ABLE TO SAY WAS, NO I DIDN'T SERVE, I WAS RIGHT HERE THE WHOLE WAR, SAFE IN BAKERSFIELD."

Adam Pelko witnessed the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that killed his father, a lieutenant on the USS Arizona. Even though Adam is underage, he defies his mother's wishes and enlists in the Marines. Sent first to boot camp, then to Okinawa, he experiences the stark reality of war firsthand -- the camaraderie and the glory as well as the grueling regimen,...