Left on their own in seventeenth-century London, three impoverished children draw upon all their resources to stay together and make their way to the Virginia colony in search of their father.
The journal of a 14-year-old girl, kept the last year she lived on the family farm, records daily events in her small New Hampshire town, her father's remarriage, and the death of her best friend.
When twelve-year-old Ben moves with his family to a town on the shore of Lake Ontario he finds a friend who seems to be a witch and who helps him meet the problems associated with his moving and with his stormy relationships with his father and big sister.
During the War of 1812, Rebecca and Abigail Bates save their town's ships from the British by playing "Yankee Doodle" on a fife and drum to simulate the approach of American troops.
A boy with a face so sad that nobody wants to look at him runs away with a caravan of giants to the city of dragons, where his sorrowful face is finally appreciated.