It's fun to be a Baby-sitters Little Sister. No fair! Karen is having a bad-luck day. Her favorite jeans are missing. There's no prize in the Crunch-O cereal box. And Boo-Boo the cat runs away from her! Karen tries everything to make her day better. But her bad luck just won't go away. She even gets punished and sent to her room! Poor Karen--will this be her worst day ever?

In 1963, when her flamboyant mother abandons the family to pursue her dream of becoming an actress, eleven-year-old Ellie Dingman takes charge of her younger siblings, while also trying to deal with her outcast status in school and frightening acts of prejudice toward the "misfits" that live on her street.

Far and near. Lost and found. Four girls. Four generations. Georgia cannot figure out what's going on in her family. Her mother, Francie, is extremely overprotective. Her grandmother, Dana, and her great-grandmother, Abby, don't speak to each other. And Georgia's great-great-grandmother also had some secrets that nobody else knows about. Georgia knows this because she's found her great-great grandmother's diary hidden in a wall in the family's house...

In 1977 in Princeton, Dana's daughter seven-year-old Francie is struggling to keep her dyslexia a secret from her teachers and family, and even the thought of high school and college is part of the remote and unattainable future.