Having run away with her younger brother to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, twelve-year-old Claudia strives to keep things in order in their new home and to become a changed person and a heroine to herself.

Through a series of family disagreements over her seven-year-old brother's efforts to become a dancer and her own determination to be a lawyer, eleven-year-old Emma realizes that it is up to children to take the initiative since parents rarely change.

Freddy is tired of being the middle child in his family until he gets a very special part in the school play.