After her family moves to California where her father goes to work in the gold fields, Amanda decides to make her own fortune baking pies and she encourages others to provide the necessary services--from a general store to a school--that enables her town to prosper.

A Jewish family fleeing Nazi Germany in 1938 endures innumerable separations before they are once again united.

After German forces occupy Denmark during World War II, fifteen-year-old Julie Weinstein and fifteen-year-old Niels Nelson and their friends and families try to cope with their daily lives, finding various ways to resist the Nazis and, ultimately, to survive.

Marcus and his classmates learn about the terrible problem of slavery in present-day Sudan and raise money to help buy the freedom of some of the slaves. Alternate chapters tell the stories of the slaves.

An old woman is taunted by the lighthouse keeper for feeding the abandoned cats that live near the lighthouse, but when she falls ill, he has a change of heart.