Valerie Tripp

While her father is away fighting in World War II, Molly finds her life full of change as she eats terrible vegetables from the victory garden and plans revenge on her brother for ruining her Halloween.

The second Christmas after their mother has died, Josefina and her three sisters find that participating in the traditions of Las Posadas helps keep memories of Mam�a alive.

In the early 1800s, nine-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.

Josefina and her sisters distrust learning to read and write, as well as other changes their T�ia Dolores is bringing to the household, because they fear they will lose their memories of their mother.

In volume four in a six-volume American Girl series, nine-year-old Felicity Merriman from colonial Williamsburg receives a guitar for her birthday, disobeys her mother by taking it out to show her friend, Elizabeth, and overhears a conversation that could mean danger for the colonists.

In 1934 Kit finds that she has hard lessons to learn about the Depression both at home, where she is helping her mother run a boarding house while her father looks for a new job, and at school, where a fight spoils the preparations for the Thanksgiving pageant.

Even though he is away serving in an English hospital during World War II, Molly's father finds a way to make the family Christmas very special.

When she discovers that Nellie and her sisters have been sent to an orphanage, Samantha, now living with her aunt and uncle in New York City, tries to help her friends as much as she can.

When Kit's family has to take in boarders, it seems as if they may be able to keep their house although her father lost his business, but the changes put a strain on Kit's friendship with Ruthie, especially as Kit spends her days helping cranky Uncle Hendrick.