From her home in back of the Grand View Restaurant in rural New York, Hannah writes letters to her best friend, a pen pal, and even to President and Mrs. Roosevelt.
Madison and Jeremy are bitter enemies and are both running for president of their high school; but as the election gets nastier, Madison gets hooked up with an anonymous pen pal who calls himself Blue.
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.
For a school assignment, a boy reluctantly writes a letter to Clunk of the planet Quazar, sending his older sister with it, but as more letters and packages are exchanged, he realizes that having an alien pen pal can be fun.
When a nonprofit organization called Save the Girls pairs a fourteen-year-old Sudanese refugee with an American teenager from Richmond, Virginia, the pen pals teach each other compassion and share a bond that bridges two continents.