After a plane crash, thirteen-year-old Brian spends fifty-four days in the Canadian wilderness, learning to survive with only the aid of a hatchet given him by his mother, and learning also to survive his parents' divorce. Includes an introduction and sidebar commentary by the author.

Julie is dreading the holidays after her parents divorce and spends her time at her best friend Ivy's home, where she helps the family celebrate the Chinese New Year.

A fifth-grader starts a newspaper with an editorial that prompts her burnt-out classroom teacher to really begin teaching again, but he is later threatened with disciplinary action as a result.

In 1974 at her new San Francisco school, nine-year-old Julie does not want to tell her class about her parents' divorce, or to tell her sister about messing up her school assignment, but when she breaks her finger playing basketball and her whole family rallies around her, she realizes the importance of telling the truth.

The year that she is in the fourth grade is a difficult one for Amber, as she tries to deal with escalating telephone fights between her divorced parents and her father's impending return to take joint custody of her.