The author remembers the summer when she was ten years old and staying with her father in Michigan where she took riding lessons and became best friends with a perfect horse.
The reader is encouraged to find in the illustrations a variety of plants and animals from twelve distinct habitats around the world that use their shape and color to ensure their survival.
This version of the familiar story in which a mistreated step-child finds happiness with the "man" of her dreams is set in the old-growth forest and features Bigfoot characters.
Bill the crocodile and his toothbrush, Pete the plover, set out to save Bill's cousin, who has been captured along with other endangered animals and taken from Egypt to Bad Guy's Big Bad Brother's Exotic Animal Farm near New Orleans, Louisiana.
