Catch a ferry to the 1904 World's Fair with the orphans of Wanderville! The orphans of Wanderville have decided to never again let themselves be confused by adults offering them shiny red apples and warm beds. They're going to make their way to California and establish a more permanent spot for Wanderville. But when they're suddenly left without means of transportation, the orphans must find a new way of getting to their "town." Enter a dandy motorist with a proposition: If the orphans agree to take a mysterious artifact to the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair on his behalf, they will receive a handsome reward that will allow them to book passage west. The citizens of Wanderville conclude that this is their best bet. What they don't realize, however, is just how treacherous the journey to the fair will be and how much they will need to sacrifice to finally find themselves a new home.

For anyone who has ever wanted to step into the world of a favorite book, here is a pioneer pilgrimage, a tribute to Laura Ingalls Wilder, and a hilarious account of butter-churning obsession. Wendy McClure is on a quest to find the world of beloved Little House on the Prairie author Laura Ingalls Wilder-a fantastic realm of fiction, history, and places she's never been to, yet somehow knows by heart. She retraces the pioneer journey of the Ingalls family- looking for the Big Woods among the medium trees in Wisconsin, wading in Plum Creek, and enduring a prairie hailstorm in South Dakota. She immerses herself in all things Little House, and explores the story from fact to fiction, and from the TV shows to the annual summer pageants in Laura's hometowns. Whether she's churning butter in her apartment or sitting in a replica log cabin, McClure is always in pursuit of "the Laura experience." Along the way she comes to understand how Wilder's life and work...

THE FIRST BOOK IN A HISTORICAL SERIES THAT'S PERFECT FOR FANS OF THE BOXCAR CHILDREN! Jack, Frances, and Frances's younger brother Harold have been ripped from the world they knew in New York and sent to Kansas on an orphan train at the turn of the century. As the train chugs closer and closer to its destination, the children begin to hear terrible rumors about the lives that await them. And so they decide to change their fate the only way they know how. . . . They jump off the train. There, in the middle of the woods, they meet a boy who will transform their lives forever. His name is Alexander, and he tells them they've come to a place nobody knows about—especially not adults—and "where all children in need of freedom are accepted." It's a place called Wanderville, Alexander says, and now Jack, Frances, and Harold are its very first citizens.