When twelve-year-old Owen finds that his nine-year-old cousin has a magic bookmark, he joins her when she enters different stories in hopes of finding a way to prevent their parents' upcoming marriage.
Bo learns about kindness, love, loyalty, appearances, and pretense from the unusual characters he meets when he is sent to live with his father after his mother decides to remarry.
Frederica Hatch finds her comfortable world transformed by Laura Lee French, a new college dorm mother and former Rockette who had once been married to Frederica's father.