Sophie Blackall

A farmhouse provides the setting for a dozen children to live and grow, and when they leave, another family arrives to fill the house with love again.

When Bean's parents leave her in the care of her older sister Nancy for the afternoon, she enlists her neighbor and best friend Ivy to come over and teach Nancy how to be a really good babysitter.

"We shall all, in the end, be led to where we belong. We shall all, in the end, find our way home. In a time of war, a mysterious child appears at the monastery of the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowing. Gentle Brother Edik finds the girl, Beatryce, curled in a stall, wracked with fever, coated in dirt and blood, and holding fast to the ear of Answelica the goat. As the monk nurses Beatryce to health, he uncovers her dangerous secret, one that imperils...

In China, at a time when few girls are taught to read or write, Ruby dreams of going to the university with her brothers and male cousins.

Having to take her younger sister along the first time she is invited to a birthday party spoils Rubina's fun, and later when that sister is asked to a party and baby sister wants to come, Rubina must decide whether to help.