In 1937, during the Depression, fifteen-year-old Mary Alice, initially apprehensive about leaving Chicago to spend a year with her fearsome, larger-than-life grandmother in rural Illinois, gradually begins to better understand and admire her grandmother's unusual qualities.

As letters flow back and forth--between the prairies of Illinois and the mountains of Afghanistan, across cultural and religious divides--sixth-grader Abby, ten-year-old Amira, and eleven-year-old Sadeed begin to speak and listen to each other.

Four years after Theo's best friend, Donovan, disappeared at age thirteen, he is found and brought home and Theo puts her health at risk as she decides whether to tell the truth about the abductor, knowing her revelation could end her life-long dream of becoming a professional ballet dancer.

A boy recounts his annual summer trips to rural Illinois with his sister during the Great Depression to visit their larger-than-life grandmother.

A boy in Illinois remembers the homefront years of World War II, especially his two heroes--his brother in the Air Force and his father, who fought in the previous war.

Twelve-year-old Lily, believing she could have prevented the accident that caused her brother's death, has quit speaking leaving everyone to think that she is brain damaged, but in her silence she sees everything, and when sly newcomer Tinny comes to town, Lily suddenly has a lot to talk about--if only she can make herself speak the words.

Since Nina's middle school in her new home in tiny Janesville, Illinois, does not have a girls basketball team, she tries out for the boys team and makes the roster--but the hostility of one the players threatens to disrupt the whole team.