In 1912 New York, Gertie feels left out while Mama and her four older sisters cook Hanukkah dinner, but Papa comes home and asks her help with an important task.

In early twentieth-century New York, as thirteen-year-old Sacha Kessler, the Inquisitor's apprentice, faces enemies old and new that threaten him and his family, he changes his mind about learning magic.

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.

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.

Rebecca Rubin worries that her tenth birthday will be ruined because it falls during Passover, but her mother's cousin Max, an actor, takes her with him to a movie studio, where she makes friends with an actress and a set carpenter.

"Rebecca is thrilled to spend the day at a real movie studio, and when a super, spectacular opportunity presents itself, she is quick to volunteer. But how will this scene play out? Then, on a visit to Coney Island, Rebecca gets the chance to use her acting skills to lighten the mood in an embarrassing situation--and her climbing skills to rescue someone in a dangerous spot. But a factory tour makes Rebecca believe her skills are needed there, too....