I assume the All-of-a-Kind Family is a series of books about the same kids? What I had in mind with mine is the story of a family and it's fight to survive the depression, with more emphasis on the older boys in the first book. I could take the books through history as the family grows. As the older ones grew up and fought WWII, the next group would take on the wartime homefront. By the time the younger ones came of age, it would be in post-war America. The third boy would grow up in time for the Korean War.
As I've stated before, these are much more mature kids than today's children. The boys were chopping wood, milking cows and feeding livestock before and after school. Yet, that farm was Camelot to them, compared to their prior life on their grandfather's farm, where they, and their mother, had worked even harder. They worried about their mother's workload--she'd already lost one stillborn child--and tried their best to relieve it. They had a vested interest in that farm and its success.
So I have adult themes with a lot of fun thrown in. Does this material sound like middle school or YA? The writing would have to be slanted that way, and I want to be sure where I'm goling with it.