Seven-year-old Billy Miller starts second grade with a bump on his head and a lot of worries, but by the end of the year he has developed good relationships with his teacher, his little sister, and his parents and learned many important lessons.

Five animal toys wait for marvelous things to happen.

When Old Bear falls asleep for the winter, he has a dream that he is a cub again, enjoying each of the four seasons.

Chrysanthemum loves her name, until she starts going to school and the other children make fun of it.

When her teacher announces that he is getting married, Lilly the mouse sets her heart on being the flower girl at his wedding.

Four-year-old Sal cannot find a gift she recieved from Santa, her new baby sister still does not have a name and takes up all of Mama's attention, and her brother Billy is annoying, but Sal finds her own strenghts over an eventful Christmas season with her family.

After helping her mother weed, water, and chase the rabbits from their garden, a young girl imagines her dream garden complete with jellybean bushes, chocolate rabbits, and tomatoes the size of beach balls.

A mouse named Wemberly, who worries about everything, finds that she has a whole list of things to be anxious about when she faces the first day of nursery school.

Fascinated by the colors, shapes, sounds, and movements of the many different birds she sees through her window, a little girl is happy to discover that she and they have something in common.

The week of her tenth birthday, Alice and her parents go to Sanibel Island, Florida, just as they do every year, but this time some of the people who are always there are missing and some new people have come, which unsettles Alice, who wants things to be exactly the same as they alway are.