A rambunctious teenager with an inquisitive mind causes much grief for all his New England family and neighbors when he visits them in the summer of 1914, on the eve of World War I.

A young girl works to impress her highly critical parents and submits to a terrible fate as she struggles to meet their impossible standards.

At a mundane dinner party, adults dance the night away while two ten-year-olds hide and explore their bodies together.

A little girl navigates her relationships with two boys in her elementary school class, a brash bully and a shy victim, and learns about the nature of suffering.

A high school boy makes a habit of stealing cars, picking up girls, and skipping school. When he begins to worry that he is getting into too much trouble, the boy must decide whether to seek help or continue his criminal lifestyle.

A four-year-old Southern boy can read novels but has never spoken a word in his life. When he goes to his family's Fourth of July picnic, he must decide whether it is the appropriate moment to speak—or if there ever will be one.

In contemporary times, a fifteen-year-old creative writing whiz is sent to a gifted creatives summer camp in Massachusetts, where he meets a young male trombonist. As the two become friends and the writer gets to know the trombonist’s family and their troubles, he turns the trombonist and his dying sister into novel characters. Everything changes when the trombonist discovers the writer’s manuscript.

A five year old child to a new home in a sandy region near miners and must navigate the seemingly random changes and curious characters she meets along the way.

After a young Southern boy reluctantly chooses an African American girl he teased throughout school as the subject of his art project, his initial judgements about her soon fade away into understanding and empathy as he completes his assignment and learns more about the intricacies of her life.

A man develops a deep interest in the author of a children's book he reads to his daughters. Ignoring his wife's confusion and mild disapproval, he goes to visit the author's old house and takes his daughters with him.