A DIFFERENT KIND OF COURAGE. <i> By Ellen Howard (Atheneum: $15, 170 pp.)</i> : THE QUEEN OF DREAMLAND.<i> By Ingrid Tomey (Atheneum: $15, 179 pp.)</i> : AMBER BROWN WANTS EXTRA CREDIT.<i> By Paula Danziger (Putnam: $13.95, 120 pp.)</i>

A child’s bravery is a peculiar and wonderful thing, the ability to persevere even when the world seems entirely crazy. In A Different Kind of Courage, author Ellen Howard manages to speak of the plight of children during World War II with a fresh, sensitive voice.

Five years ago Howard heard the story of an American woman who spirited French children out of that country during the war. She researched the tale and fashioned a powerful, intelligent novel out of it--the story of Bertrand, a young boy whose mother is trying to get him and his younger sister out of Paris, and Zina, whose parents emigrated to the south of France from Russia 20 years earlier.

Howard manages to deftly capture the fear children must have felt as their parents suddenly began to behave in odd ways: Lying, changing plans on the spur of the moment, abandoning treasured family possessions in favor of a ride in a stranger’s car. Bertrand is left at a convent with his sister and, though his mother plans to return, he does not know it. Zina overhears her father tell her mother that they might have a chance to get by, were it not for the children. And then both are forced to find a strength that might overwhelm some adults: to set off to a new country, with a new language, all the reassurances of home stripped away. A clear, impassioned retelling of an all-too-familiar tale.

Julie, the central character in Ingrid Tomey’s The Queen of Dreamland, has a different problem. Her parents are altogether doting, but they are not her birth parents. Julie is adopted, and for her 14th birthday she receives a note inviting her to “come to Dreamland and have your palm read for free! Find out all the secrets of your life!” Soon after her mom--for some reason named Loretta Young--walks back into her life, as exotic as her adoptive parents are mundane, wearing perfume and a gold jumpsuit and promising a new life of drama and adventure. The dichotomy is a bit too obvious and the outcome something less than a surprise.

Tomey addresses important issues of private adoption, which to Julie boil down to one mom not loving her enough and the other having enough money to buy her off. But the characterizations veer close to stereotype, as Julie decides that the financially secure parents have a stronger commitment to her than her less-well-off mercurial mom. Loretta Young seems, in the end, a device designed to make Julie appreciate the life she has.

Amber Brown, of the popular book series, has far less-pressing problems in Amber Brown Wants Extra Credit. The 9-year-old faces a mother who (Holy mop handle!) wants her room clean, a teacher who expects her to finish her homework on time and a new man in her life--Max, who is dating her divorced mom. Amber refuses to meet him, because as long as she doesn’t know him she can go on believing he doesn’t exist and continue imagining a reconciliation between her parents. Despite the fact that her father lives in Paris and has a girlfriend, Amber intends to stand her ground. Author Paula Danziger attacks this rash of modern problems in her trademark wisecrack style, with timeouts for sermonettes: “Amber, you have a right to your feelings . . . but you know that you have to be open to changes.” A useful tool for parents whose marriages resemble the Continental Divide, but not the kind of fiction that’s going to elicit a lot of contemplative thought.