Eleven-year-old Edwina confronts old and new challenges when her longtime best friend Sally faces the inevitable death of the grandmother who raised her.
A young girl's dull life is transformed when she meets and befriends an extraordinary talking mole that likes to be read to and tell of his own past exploits throughout the centuries.
Relates an incident from the childhood of civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., when his best friend's father said they could no longer play together because "colored and white can't mix.".
Big Hasuni is scared off after he accidentally destroys a campsite while investigating the plume of smoke rising above an island, only to find a disaster waiting for him at his mountain camp upon his return.