Jamie Grover (Kimberly J. Brown) is an only child who has always wanted out from the constant attention her parents give her. Her wish is finally granted when she finds out her mother is pregnant, but when she turns out to have quints, Jamie’s life changes in ways she had never imagined. She discovers she might not want the same things her parents want for her, but nonetheless, her parents focus all of their attention on her baby brothers and sisters. But when one of her brothers gets terribly ill (from quints) she discovers that she really doesn’t mind the babies, and that she does have the courage to let her parents know she has dreams of her own.

Zenon Kar is 15 and lives on a space station which the military has taken over and is dismantling. She receives a mysterious signal and must convince everyone that it’s from aliens who have come to help them.

Mahree Bok lives on a farm in South Africa. Her father is a policeman who cannot hide his joy when activist Steve Biko is caught by the South African authorities. Piper Dellums is the daughter of a US congressman from California and who lives in a nice home in Washington DC. When Mahree is chosen to spend a semester at the Dellums’ house, she doesn’t expect that her host family would be black. Nor do her hosts suspect that she is not a black South African.