In the midst of a backyard campout, ten-year-old Matt and four other children find themselves transported back into the time of George Washington and the American Revolution, where they begin to live out American history firsthand and learn the sober realities of war.

Twelve-year-old Austin Ives writes letters to his younger brother describing his three-thousand-mile journey from their home in Pennsylvania to Oregon in 1851.

In late seventeenth-century England, eleven-year-old Digory, forced to leave his hometown after his father is lost at sea, becomes an apprentice to the architect Henry Winstanley, who built a lighthouse on the treacherous Eddystone Reef -- the very rocks that sank Digory's grandfather's ship years before.

In the early 1900s, two cousins leave their Russian shtetl with the rest of their family to come to America, hopeful that they will all pass the dreaded inspection at Ellis Island.

The O'Mally sisters' bubble bath has some scary moments when they realize their bubbles contain chickens, frogs, and a mean, hungry alligator.