Early in the 20th century new opportunities were opened to Japanese women, thanks to modern consumer goods and to the new technologies of self-awareness offered by snapshot cameras, family albums, and mass produced diary books.Nakano Makiko and her family were on the hinge of historical change in 1910, the year that she kept a daily record of her activities as the young wife in a busy merchant household in Kyoto.

Eva's class is putting on a play, Snowy White and the seven owlets, but Eva is a little disappointed when she is cast as the Magic Mirror (and Snowy White's understudy); the owl students are making all the sets, props, and costumes, and rehearsal is a little chaotic--but the play is going well until Snowy White hurts her leg and Eva has to fill in for real.

Nurk, a sort-of brave shrew, packs up a few pairs of clean socks and sails off on an accidental adventure, guided by wisdom found in the journal of his famously brave and fierce grandmother, Lady Surka the warrior shrew.

A bump on the head suffered during gym class causes middle school drama queen Nikki Maxwell to have a crazy dream where all of her acquaintances assume the roles of familiar fairy tale characters.

In a series of humorous diary entries, a New York City ninth grader agonizes over her love life, final exams, and future role as the princess of Genovia.

In the diary account of her journey from Ireland in 1847 and of her work in a mill in Lowell, Massachusetts, fourteen-year-old Mary reveals a great longing for her family.

"In her third book that continues to define the contours of the contemporary essay, Sarah Manguso confronts a meticulous diary that she has kept for twenty-five years. "I wanted to end each day with a record of everything that had ever happened," she explains. But this simple statement belies a terror that she might forget something, that she might miss something important. Maintaining that diary, now 800,000 words, had become, until recently, a kind...

In 1871 Joshua Loper, a sixteen-year-old black cowboy, records in his journal his experiences while making his first cattle drive under an unsympathetic trail boss.