Second-grader Hailey's frustration over a school project releases Maybelle, a sprite whose punishment for being a rulemonger will end when she grants Hailey's wish to have fun, but Maybelle's efforts only seem to cause trouble.

Relates Sally Jane's experience of changing times in rural America, as she lives through the drowning of the Swift River towns in western Massachusetts to form the Quabbin Reservoir.

In 1810s Massachusetts, young Mary Elizabeth Sawyer nurses a sickly lamb back to health and becomes the subject of a famous nursery rhyme. Includes facts about the real Mary, John Roulstone who wrote the rhyme, and Lowell Mason who set it to music.

In the summer of 1942, when Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands lives down the road from his family's house in Massachusetts, young William decides to take her some of the blueberries he has picked. Includes historical notes.

Buster, a walnut orb weaving spider, enlists the help of Jo Beth, one of a family of poisonous but friendly brown recluse spiders, to help stop humans who are stealing from the rare books room of the Boston Public Library, where the spiders live.