Molly Beth Griffin

During the summer of 1926 in the lake resort town of Excelsior, Minnesota, sixteen-year-old Garnet, who dreams of indulging her passion for ornithology, is resigned to marrying a nice boy and settling into middle-class homemaking until she takes a liberating job in a hat shop and begins an intense, secret relationship with a daring and beautiful flapper.

Stella the Mouse, Nico the Toad, Delilah the Spider, and Bo the Parakeet are all delighted that today is the first day of school, and the children will be back--but some of the children, the new ones, seem nervous and unhappy, so the four school friends set out to find some way to make those children feel welcome.

The girl wants a leaf pile to leap in. A big leaf pile, a huge leaf pile, an enormously enormous leaf pile! She rakes and rakes and rakes, but there are not enough leaves in her yard to make the leaf pile of her dreams. And she can't do it alone. She will need some help. And so it begins: one neighbor kid here, a couple of neighbor kids there, others from down the street. They all have leaves to contribute as they build a pile together in a nearby...

A baby loon, afraid that his mother will not return, sets out on his own to find his way across a stormy lake to their home in the great north woods.