Eleven-year-old Y'Tin is the youngest elephant trainer in his village. When the Vietcong invades, Y'Tin and his friend Y'Juen flee into the jungle where they care for a beloved elephant and search for relatives who survived the attack.
During the Second-Century Han Dynasty, two young boys — one the son of a military commander, the other a child of peasants — form a friendship, despite the rigid class structures.
While his father is in prison for treating a leader of the democracy movement, 15-year-old Chiko is drafted into the Burmese military.
Though it's unusual for a girl in colonial India, 15-year-old Vidya's father supports her dream of attending college.
Sixteen-year old Brit is humiliated when her parents leave her with her grandmother Nannie, while they go on vacation to Alaska.
All Irene wants to do is hair, but when she is fired by her mother during her summer job at a salon, her life becomes less glamorous… for a minute.
One of the four novellas in this King classic is The Body, which became the basis for the movie Stand by Me. Four young guys find out about a body on the train tracks and decide to go see it.
Chad is a Jersey Shore native who decides that becoming a boardwalk dunk-tank bozo is the best way to release his stresses. Hilarity ensues, along with some poignant moments about the real man behind the bozo.
D.J. spends the summer helping her father with their farm work, while also getting coerced into training the rival football team's quarterback. D.J.
Ben is only 11 but in his 8th foster home. There, Ben allows himself to feel deeply for another foster child, a baby named for a Sesame Street character and abandoned by his mother much like Ben was.