William, a twelve-year-old orphan, writes of his experiences in pre-Revolutionary War Boston where he joins the cause of the patriots who are opposed to the British rule.
In 1932, a twelve-year-old girl who lost her sight in an accident keeps a diary, recorded by her twin sister, in which she describes life at Perkins School for the Blind in Watertown, Massachusetts.
Twelve-year-old Amber Billows, upset to be moving once again to follow her father's reporting job, cannot help loving Hawaii, but the peace of her tropical paradise is shattered on December 7, 1941, when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor.