Having survived being blinded and shipwrecked on a tiny Caribbean island with the old Black man Timothy, twelve-year-old white boy Phillip is rescued and hopes to regain his sight with an operation. Alternate chapters follow the life of Timothy from his days as a young cabin boy.

Young William Bonney is talked into committing his first train robbery, unaware that his cousin and best friend, Willie Monroe, is now sheriff of the nearest town, and that his fellow robbers are already wanted in four states.

Eleven-year-old Maria and her family are the first Mexican Americans to enter a float in the annual Christmas parade in San Lazaro, California.

Two Inuit brothers must fend for themselves while stranded on an ice floe that is adrift in the Greenland Strait. The year is 1868, and fourteen-year-old Alika and his younger brother, Sulu, are hunting for seals on an ice floe attached to their island in the Arctic. Suddenly the ice starts to shake, and they hear a loud crack--the terrible sound of the floe breaking free from land. The boys watch with horror as the dark expanse of water between the...

When sixteen-year-old Sam falls in love with disfigured Chip Clewt and helps him in his campaign to save the black bears in the North Carolina swamp near her home, she gets in deep trouble with her father, an avid hunter.

In 1935, living at a lighthouse near San Francisco, a lonely nine-year-old boy inadvertently summons a magician who teaches him the secret of flying.

Fifteen-year-old Ben must cope alone when a mysterious sniper begins shooting the big cats in his family's private zoological preserve.

A twelve-year-old Mexican crosses the border illegally to join his father in California.

Vacationing on what they think is an uninhabited island, fifteen-year-old Peg and her father find their adventure turned into a fight for survival.