In 1862, sixteen-year-old Rufus Rowe runs away from home and settles in Fredericksburg, Virginia, where he documents in his journal the battle he watches unfold there.

In 1903, ten-year-old Sofia and her family begin their life in America in Boston, where her father works in a grocery, her mother sells pasta, and she goes to school while trying to stay in touch with her old friend Maureen. Includes historical notes.

While her father is in hiding after attempts on his life, twelve-year-old Cleopatra records in her diary how she fears for her own safety and hopes to survive to become Queen of Egypt some day.

Princess Mia, struggling to come to terms with her recent breakup with Michael and prepare for an important speaking engagement at a gala for Domina Rei, finds solace and guidance in the diary of a teenage princess for Genovia, and discovers a secret that may change her country's history forever.

Thirteen-year-old Lady Grace Cavendish, maid of honor to Queen Elizabeth I, describes in her diary her efforts to discover who is counterfeiting the new English silver coin.

Budding cartoonist Junior leaves his troubled school on the Spokane Indian Reservation to attend an all-white farm town school where the only other Native American is the school mascot.

In 1901, fourteen-year-old Mable Riley dreams of being a writer and having adventures while stuck in Perth County, Ontario, assisting her sister in teaching school and secretly becoming friends with a neighbor who holds scandalous opinions on women's rights.

Lady Grace Cavendish, Elizabeth I's youngest maid of honor, finds herself in the midst of a battle at sea while posing as a boy aboard the ship of Francis Drake, where she and Masou stowed away in hopes of finding the kidnapped Lady Sarah.

In 1932, a twelve-year-old girl who lost her sight in an accident keeps a diary, recorded by her twin sister, in which she describes life at Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Fourteen-year-old Polly Rodgers keeps a diary of her 1873 journey from England to Minnesota as part of a colony of eighty people seeking religious freedom, and of their first year struggling to make a life there, led by her father, a Baptist minister.