Sixth-grader Griffin Penshine has always believed wishes can come true, and so when a strange woman curses her with a box of pennies, Griffin fears her evil desires will come true until she returns each penny to the person who first wished upon it.

In 1994, Fig looks back on her life and relates her experiences, from age six to nineteen, as she desperately tries to save her mother from schizophrenia while her own mental health and relationships deteriorate.

Lu Wonder, a bright, curious girl who hopes to be a scientist, sets out from her Kansas home in 1855 with her best friend Eustace, a slave, on a journey to Antarctica to protect a mysterious artifact and hide it from the man responsible for her father's death.

After his parents are kidnapped, timid twelve-year-old Henry York leaves his sheltered Boston life and moves to small-town Kansas, where he and his cousin Henrietta discover and explore hidden doors in his attic room that seem to open onto other worlds.