Sophia Garcia, thirteen, wants to excel at softball like her older sister, Ellie, and make her family proud, but when she is chosen for a different team and position than Ellie, she must learn to succeed by being herself.

Fifteen-year-old Molly gains support from her extended Irish American family and enlightenment in Girl Corps philosophy and activities as she deals with a cheating boyfriend and overbearing best friend.

Berkeley, California, middle-schooler Jason Jameson has a close encounter of the fun kind when Sam, a bluish alien from the Pleiades, arrives in a 1960 Dodge Dart spaceship and invites Jason to go fishing.

When eight-and-a-half-year-old Abigail Iris gets the kitten she has been wanting, she learns about the responsibilities that come with pet ownership, as well as the impact a kitten can have on a large family.

High school sophomore Kat struggles with her twelve-year-old brother's recurring leukemia and likely death while coping with mean girls at school and possible romance.

When fifteen-year-old Ruby, along with her mother, stepfather, and younger brother, move to Marin County, California, leaving her older brother back home with her father and stepmother, she feels lost among the wealthier, more sophisticated people she meets, but gradually she begins to see a side of herself that never really fit into her old life, and she opens herself up to the new experiences that God is offering her.

In a small California town in 1951, twelve-year-old Paolo and his deaf cousin Billy get caught up in a search for money missing from the church collection, leading them to complicated discoveries about themselves, other family members, and townspeople they thought they knew.

Fifteen-year-old Joanne, raised in San Francisco's Haight District, becomes involved with Martin, a hippy, and various aspects of the late 1960s cultural revolution despite her middle-class upbringing.

When his father is arrested for insider trading and his family loses all their money, Brett Gerson takes a job as an assistant to a 70-something pool cleaner in his former wealthy California neighborhood and learns some valuable life lessons.