Plain Girl — Virginia Sorensen

Every day, every hour at school, Esther stood out like "one black bird against the sky" in her plain clothes. Esther was Amish, or a Plain Girl. It wasn't until she was almost ten years old that the Pennsylvania school authorities forced her father to send her to public school. The Amish, you see, believe in teaching their children at home, according to their own ways.

Esther's brother, Dan, had gone to public school -- and, because of the different life he discovered there, he had run away from home. Dan felt that he, not his parents, should decide whether or not he would accept the Amish way of life.

Esther was secretly looking forward to seeing all the wonderful things at school that Dan had told her about. But like Dan, she knew that she, too, would be faced with a difficult choice.