One sunny Saturday in 1889, Lizzie helps her grandmother scrub, boil, rinse, and hang loads of laundry, although she would rather be having a tea party with her best friend, Lucy, and their dolls, Amelia Cordelia and Belinda Lavinia.

It's 1863 and 10-year-old Emmy Blue Hatchett has been told by her father that soon their family will leave their farm, family, and friends in Illinois, and travel west to a new home in Colorado. It's difficult leaving family and friends behind. They might not see one another ever again. When Emmy's grandmother comes to say goodbye, she gives Emmy a special gift to keep her occupied on the trip. The journey by wagon train is long and full of hardships....

Westward Journeys contains three stories focusing on the American westward expansion, including the Oregon Trail and the Oklahoma Land Run. In Minnow and Rose, Rose and her family are traveling with a wagon train heading west on the Oregon Trail. When she encounters Minnow, a young native girl, their meeting has life-changing results for both cultures. The Oklahoma Land Run is the topic in Pappy's Handkerchief. When Moses and his family hear of free...

While Laura Ingalls grows up in a little house on the western prairie, Almanzo Wilder is living on a big farm in New York State. Almanzo and his brother and sisters help with the summer planting and fall harvest. In winter there is wood to be chopped and great slabs of ice to be cut from the river and stored. Almanzo wishes for just one thing--his very own horse--but he must prove that he is ready for such a big responsibility.

Fifteen-year-old Laura learns that living away from home and teaching school can be a bit frightening when most of the students are taller than she is, but every week Almonzo Wilder arrives to take her home for the weekend.

Eighteen-year-old Eff must finally get over believing she is bad luck and accept that her special training in Aphrikan magic, and being the twin of the seventh son of a seventh son, give her extraordinary power to combat magical creatures that threaten settlements on the western frontier.

In the mid-nineteenth century, as young Katie and her father help plant and tend trees in their booming frontier town, she doubts that the spindly saplings will ever grow big. Includes facts about Arbor Day.

In pioneer days, a young girl who is a talented artist is encouraged to paint portraits, Bible scenes, and other pictures, but told never to sign her work, either because it would be a sign of pride or because artists are expected to be men.

A boy growing up in the Oregon country in the early 1900's experiences the death of his father, the remarriage of his mother, and the ultimate attainment of a dream.

Barbie's family sets up a backyard campsite to try living like pioneers, but when her mother needs to get an important project to work and there is too much traffic for her to get it there on time, the girls come up with a way to save the day.