On Chester's eleventh birthday, his father announces that it's time for him to build an iceboat, just as he and his grandfather had before him. Chester is excited to build the craft but is unsure if he has the skill to sail it by himself.

Amy loves to hear the stories connected to each button in her grandma's button box. When her grandma passes away on Christmas Eve, her final present to Amy is already under the Christmas tree – the button box so that Amy can add her own stories.

Two commanders, one human, one alien, have been best friends for a lifetime but now find their empires at war and with five minutes left in an ultimatum, five minutes before they blow each other to smithereens, a phone call? "Raymond?" "Mom?" "It's mother's day, you're too busy to call your mother?"

When their mother dies, four sisters disguise themselves as men and find apprenticeships with a tailor, a hunter, a thief and a stargazer. At the end of their apprenticeships, each is given a magic tool. Both the skills and the magic are critical when they are enlisted to save the young king's betrothed and her four brothers from a loathsome dragon.

Katherine, a young witch, has dyslexia and can't ever get spells right. But when her friend the garden wizard suggests that she try singing the spells, Katherine succeeds where her classmates failed in charming the Dragon and winning the Dragon's fire to give the village luck.

Mama, Papa and Granny all have peculiar ways of knowing that a big rain is coming – none of them very scientific. But that doesn't stop Papa from building a raft the size of an ark for the great flood of 1908.

When Sarah's grandma was fourteen and living in England, she fell out of the hayloft but never hit the ground. That was the day she discovered she could fly with the help of a little magic leftover from times pasts.

Mr. Runkle grows only orderly vegetables while his neighbor, Miss Appleby's garden is a tangle of bright flowers with the exception of one gigantic, prize winning pumpkin.