A trip around a city block is like a trip around the world! Peeking out through a die-cut window on the jacket, Madlenka invites the reader to enter her world. And what a world it is! On the surface, it looks like an ordinary city block, but as we meet Madlenka's neighbors -- the French baker, the Indian news vendor, the Italian ice-cream man, the Latin American grocer, a retired opera singer from Germany, an African American school friend, and the Asian shopkeeper -- and look through die-cut windows to the images and memories they have carried from old country to new, we can see that Madlenka's block is as richly varied as its inhabitants.

When a seven-year-old girl eyes her mother's suitcase full of gorgeous silk, cotton & embroidered saris she decides that she too should wear one, even though she is too young for such clothing. Her mother tells her no, but soon realises how important it is for her little girl to feel like a big girl.

It's Rakhi, the Hindu holiday special to brothers and sisters, and Arun wishes he had a sister with whom to celebrate. Soon it looks as if his wish will come true. His parents are going to adopt a baby girl named Asha, and she is coming from India.

Ba slipped the gold bangles from my wrists. The gold ones were plain so I didn't mind taking them off, but I loved wearing my milk-glass bangles and the lakkh bracelets. A widow can't wear bangles, she said. They are signs of a woman's good fortune. When your husband dies it's over. Kashmira Sheth paints a heartfelt and evocative portrait of twelve-year-old Leela, a child turned widow, in Gandhi-era India.

Aided by others who have suffered at the hands of the king, a blackbird seeks revenge on the monarch who has stolen his wife.

A retelling of an Indian fable relating to the former births of Buddha, in which, as a monkey, he manages to outwit the crocodile, who decides to capture him

"It's a pillar," says one. "It's a fan," says another. One by one, the seven blind mice investigate the strange Something by the pond. And one by one, they come back with a different theory.