In the early 1800s, when ten-year-old Josefina accompanies her father into the New Mexican mountains to check on the elderly shepherd who works for him and she proves herself a good traveling companion when her father has an accident.

Nine-year-old Josefina wants to give up learning to play the piano until she sees how much joy her music gives to her baby nephew. Discusses the importance of music on the New Mexican frontier and describes how to dance La Vaquerita.

Presents a collection of five short stories featuring "American Girl" Felicity Merriman, who is growing up in Virginia before the Revolutionary War.

Tired of doing chores and longing for adventure during the Great Depression, Kit meets a hobo and decides to hop a freight train.

In 1934, during the Depression, Kit's cantankerous uncle comes to live in the Cincinnati boardinghouse run by her parents, enlisting her aid in transcribing his complaining letters to the editor of the local newspaper and inspiring her to write a different kind of letter of her own.