The week of her tenth birthday, Alice and her parents go to Sanibel Island, Florida, just as they do every year, but this time some of the people who are always there are missing and some new people have come, which unsettles Alice, who wants things to be exactly the same as they alway are.

In1973, Flora loves living in the quiet town of Rosetown, Indiana, where change is not constant, but life takes a decided turn during the summer between fourth and fifth grades.

"'Personally I don't mind them coming here but they might bother some of my customers.' Thirteen-year old Billie Sims has heard things like this all her life, from the grocer down the road, from her neighbors at church, from her parents. But Billie never understood what all the fuss was about. Why do blacks and whites have separate entrances to the bus station in her town of Anniston, Alabama? Why can't her friend Jarmaine, have a milk shake with...

Eleven-year-old Belinda "Bindi" Winkler and her family find their way through tough times with the love and support of the community that grows around their newly opened restaurant, "The Dancing Pancake."

In this novel written in free verse, Clare and her grandfather must deal with changes in their lives when Clare's summer growth spurt threatens to end her dream of becoming a ballet dancer and her grandfather suffers a stroke.

Orphaned siblings nine-year-old Cordelia and eleven-year-old Connor, accompanied by their pet capybara, go to live with their aunt in the strange town of Woundabout, where nothing seems to change.

Twelve-year-old Colton and his mother move to a farm in California, away from his grandfather and his rodeo-champion father in Idaho, and after his cat Smoke goes missing, Colt feels even more lonely for his old life.