While Rebecca Rubin helps her building's ailing superintendent take care of his homing pigeons, she puzzles over what to do with the Christmas centerpiece her teacher insisted she make but which has no place in her Jewish home.

To celebrate the country's bicentennial, Julie joins her cousins on a pioneer-style wagon train which is filled with adventures, challenges, and self discovery.

While celebrating her brother's Bar Mitzvah on Coney Island, nine-year-old Rebecca Rubin disobeys by going off on her own, leaving her cousin Ana, a recent immigrant, alone.

In 1974 at her new San Francisco school, nine-year-old Julie does not want to tell her class about her parents' divorce, or to tell her sister about messing up her school assignment, but when she breaks her finger playing basketball and her whole family rallies around her, she realizes the importance of telling the truth.

When Julie runs for student body president, the other students are put off by her choice for vice president, a deaf student named Joy.

The first Christmas since Julie's parents' divorce is difficult for the whole family, but Julie finds comfort sharing the Chinese New Year traditions of her best friend, Ivy Ling, and thinking about new beginnings.

When Julie and Ivy visit a wildlife rescue center after finding a baby owl in Golden Gate Park, they learn about two eagles who need help before they can be released back into the wild.