Peanut and Butter, the two dogs Aldo gets for his eleventh birthday, create chaos inside the house while his parents are out of town and get accused of tearing up the neighbor's lawn.

In the summer of 1910, Dossi, a poor Russian immigrant from the tenements of New York, spends two weeks with the Meade family on their Vermont farm, and all their lives are enriched by the experience.

Thirteen-year-old Karen Sossi encounters bad luck when she ignores her schoolwork for cooking and baby-sitting.

The year Elisa enters the first grade is filled with exciting times at school and special celebrations at home.

Fifteen-year-old Elaine suddenly finds her life very interesting, as her family deals with the death of a cat, her little brother gets five dogs for his birthday, and she begins a promising romance.

A year after her father has left home for good, fifth-grader DeDe helps her mother cope with the realities of life after divorce.

In early twentieth-century Vermont, sixteen-year-old Emma confides in her diary both her hopes of becoming a farmer's wife one day and her frustrations with her parents' belief that she is too young to be courted by the handsome Cole Berry.