Palms

Admiral Frank Beardsley returns to New London to run the Coast Guard Academy, his last stop before a probable promotion to head the Guard. A widower with eight children, he runs a loving but tight ship, with charts and salutes. The kids long for a permanent home. Helen North is a free spirit, a designer whose ten children live in loving chaos, with occasional group hugs. Helen and Frank, high school sweethearts, reconnect at a reunion, and it's love at first re-sighting. They marry on the spot. Then the problems start as two sets of kids, the free spirits and the disciplined preppies, must live together. The warring factions agree to work together to end the marriage.

An orphan boy named Tim is afraid of the dark. However, when the stars start going out in the sky, he finds himself exploring the world of the night, alongside his new friend, the Cat Shepherd.

A plover chick has not learned to fly when his family migrates in the fall. He must survive the arctic winter, vicious enemies and himself in order to be reunited with his beloved one next spring.

Young and feisty Gilly Hopkins devises a scheme to escape from her new foster home and reunite with her birth mother.