Nine-year-old Elizabeth keeps a journal of her experiences in the New World as she encounters Indians, suffers hunger and the death of friends, and helps her father build their first home.

In the West Virginia town of Way Down Deep in the 1950s, a foundling called Ruby June is happily living with Miss Arbutus at the local boarding house when suddenly, after the arrival of a family of outsiders, the mystery of Ruby's past begins to unravel.

Written in blank verse, the story of Mildred Loving, an African American girl, and Richard Loving, a Caucasian boy, who challenge the Viriginia law forbidding interracial marriages in the 1950s.

Describes the daily life and hardships that the settlers experienced during the year 1607 in Colonial Jamestown.

Traces the dangers and adventures surrounding the history of the first permanent British settlement in America, highlighting the roles played by John Smith, Pocahontas, and other individuals.

In 1905, ten-year-old Billy is taken from an orphanage to live with an aunt and uncle he never knew he had, and he enjoys his first taste of family life until his work in a coal mine and involvement with a union brings trouble, then he joins a circus in hopes of finding his father.

Thirteen-year-old orphaned beggar Rob Brackett is kidnapped from the streets of London and taken to the New World for a cruel tobacco farmer master, who also owns a Pamunkey Native American girl named Mattoume.

Elizabeth Barker continues to write to her "friend, " her diary, as disease and lack of food further plague the suffering settlers at Jamestown.

In 1954, when mine closings bring an economic crisis to Way Down Deep, West Virginia, foundling Ruby Jolene Hurley makes a thirteenth-birthday wish to find the treasure rumored to have been buried by one of the town's founders.

Eleven-year-old April is delighted when President and Mrs. Hoover build a school near her Madison County, Virginia, home but her family's poverty, grief over the accidental death of her brother, and other problems may mean that April can never learn to read from the wonderful teacher, Miss Vest.