Central Kansas Library System

The ordinary interactions and everyday routines of the Watsons, an African American family living in Flint, Michigan, are drastically changed after they go to visit Grandma in Alabama in the summer of 1963.

In 1952 eleven-year-old Azalea is sent to Paris Junction, Arkansas, to help out her grandmother who has injured her foot, but does not really seem to want her help; Billy Wong is a Chinese-American boy whose uncle owns the local grocery store, in town to attend the "white" school, since the Chinese mission school has closed, but frustrated by the overt prejudice of the local children--and over the summer the two begin to forge a friendship.

Thirteen-year-old Genesis tries again and again to lighten her black skin, thinking it is the root of her family's troubles, before discovering reasons to love herself as is.

When Mr. Lincoln, "the coolest principal in the whole world," discovers that Eugene, the school bully, knows a lot about birds, he uses this interest to help Eugene overcome his intolerance.