When Bobbo, a stuffed animal, is thrown on top of a school bus, he travels to school and enjoys adventures before making his way back to his owner Lily.
Enduring the terror and shortages caused by the Blitz in 1940 Liverpool, thirteen-year-old Joan is unable to spend time with her friends in the face of intensifying bombing raids and makes a shattering discovery about a stranger and a local mill.
In his absence, Abel's children relive his tales of earlier adventures, make a moon machine out of an old table, and dream of being joined with him through the all-seeing moon.
Working in a big house owned by two refined ladies to support her mother and brothers, a young scullery maid in early-twentieth-century England borrows books and dreams of a better life before saving her employers from a kitchen fire.