A look at what life might have been like for royal teens of the past, mixing storytelling with historical facts. Includes Cleopatra VII, daughter of the Nile ; Isabel, jewel of Castilla, Spain; and Elizabeth I, red rose of the House of Tudor, England.

In 1848, nine-year-old Joshua Martin McCullough writes a journal of his family's journey from Missouri to Oregon in a covered wagon. Includes a historical note about westward migration.

Brought up in France as the African slave companion of a nobleman's daughter, thirteen-year-old Zettie records the events of 1763, when she and her mistress escape to the New World where they are inadvertently drawn into the hostilities of the ongoing French and Indian War and, eventually, find a new direction to their lives.

In her diary, Margaret Ann describes how she becomes a companion to an American woman, sails on the Titanic, and experiences its sinking.

Forced to drop out of school at the age of fourteen to help support her family, Angela, an Italian immigrant, works long hours for low wages in a garment factory, and becomes a participant in the shirtwaist worker strikes of 1909.