Before the first Christmas light is strung, Grandma is hard at work, making thousands of tamales to sell so she can buy gifts for her family!

Through an enchanted conversation with a young girl in a horse drawn coach, Hans Christian Andersen shares his life’s struggles, dreams, and triumphs whose threads can be found woven into his greatest stories. He tells her about the “fairy tale of his life” and how the son of a shoemaker became a celebrated writer.

It’s the morning of Tet, and Mai can’t wait to celebrate at her beloved grandmother’s home. With the perfect dress: a poofy, sparkly Cinderella dress that makes Mai look like the movie star she dreams of being! But when Mai’s father suggests that she wears an áo dài, a traditional Vietnamese outfit, to her Ba Noi’s party, Mai is disappointed. Stars don’t wear áo dài, she thinks. Then Ba tells her the story of a true star, her very own Ba Noi, who sewed beautiful, highly sought after áo dài in Vietnam and brought her magic with her when she immigrated to the United States. So maybe stars wear áo dài after all! But how can Ba Noi know what Mai’s wearing when Ba Noi is losing her eyesight? Ba tells her every áo dài is sewn with love, and the beauty of love is that you don’t need to see it to know it’s here.

The Seminoles are known as the people who never surrendered. As White settlers continued to encroach on their land, the Seminoles moved farther and farther into the Florida Everglades and adapted to their new environment with their hard work and ingenuity. And after defending their land in three Seminole wars, they never signed a formal peace treaty with the United States.

Dani is just a regular kid living in Buenos Aires except for the bright light that follows him everywhere he goes. He wishes he could be like the other kids, but he finds that sometimes you just have to let your own light shine through.

Set 800 years ago in the Yuan dynasty, Su Ling and her family live in a village where the Mongols have invaded and made life very difficult for them. But the villagers are smart, and a plan to revolt against the Mongols begins to form with a message tucked into the Mid Autumn Festival mooncakes: On the 15th day of the 8th lunar month, on the day of the full moon, commence attack at midnight. It’s up to brave Su Ling to deliver the message to her uncle without getting caught by the Mongol guards.

It’s the year 2052. Stevie Henry is a Cherokee girl working at a museum in Texas, trying to save up enough money to go to college. The world around her is in a cycle of drought and superstorms, ice and fire but people get by. But it’s about to get a whole lot worse. When a mysterious boy shows up at Stevie’s museum saying that he’s from the future and telling her what is to come, she refuses to believe him. But soon she will have no choice.

Eloísa loves music, but with her family too poor to buy a radio, she can only hear it when rhythms and melodies drift through her open window. Birds and cats raise their voices in daily choruses, and songs from a neighbor’s radio travel through the air. On the street below, children shake maracas and beat a steady rhythm on bongo drums and a lute, a cowbell, and un güiro round out the orchestra. The sounds of her neighborhood are music enough for Eloísa, but when Mamá gets sick and the family can’t afford medicine, can la música soothe her the way it’s always comforted Eloísa?

Sumi’s mother can speak two languages, Malayalam and English. And she can switch between them at the speed of sound: one language when talking to Sumi’s grandmother, another when she addresses the cashier. Sometimes with Sumi she speaks a combination of both. Could it be she possesses a superpower? With awe and curiosity, young Sumi recounts the story of her mother’s migration from India and how she came to acquire two tongues, now woven together like fine cloth.

Off to the market for a tasty bite, Dada and Sona shop for tonight! From twenty ladoos to sixteen mangoes to ten butter naan to seven samosas, the market is full of endless scrumptious snacks to sample. Dada and Sona stock up on all the goodies in preparation for a special surprise.