"A red oak tree and a crow help their human neighbors work out their differences"-- An old red oak tree tells how he and his crow friend, Bongo, help their human neighbors get along after a threat against an immigrant family is carved into the tree's trunk.

As further evidence of his family's bad fortune which they attribute to a curse on a distant relative, Stanley Yelnats is sent to a hellish correctional camp in the Texas desert where he finds his first real friend, a treasure, and a new sense of himself.

"Jack and Annie are whisked back in time by the magic tree house to meet Benjamin Franklin in Old Philadelphia"--