This beloved story of a pioneer girl and her family begins in 1871 in a log cabin on the edge of the Big Woods of Wisconsin. Laura lives in the little house with her pa, her ma, her sisters Mary and Carrie, and their dog, Jack. Pioneer life is sometimes hard for the family, but it is also exciting as they make their own homemade toys and treats, do the spring planting, bring in the harvest, and visit town. And every night Laura and her family are...

The discoveries and adventures of ten-year-old Lucinda, who spends a wonderful year exploring the New York City of the 1890's.

Alone in a sampan with his pig and three ducklings, a little Chinese boy is whirled down a raging river, back to the town from which he and his parents had escaped the invading Japanese, and spends long and frightening days regaining his family and new home.

Kidnapped by the crew of an Africa-bound ship, a thirteen-year-old boy discovers to his horror that he is on a slaver and his job is to play music for the exercise periods of the human cargo. Snatched from the docks of New Orleans, thirteen-year-old Jessie is thrown aboard a slave ship where he must play his fife so that captured slaves will "dance," and keep their muscles strong and their bodies profitable. Jessie is sickened by the horrible practices...

As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.