The kids from Spooksville are held prisoner on a planet of slaves after requesting money, gadgets, clothes, and galactic peace from a magic alien wishing stone.

Please, she thought to the stone, let there be a best friend for me in that boat. Let it be so and I’ll set you free, and toss you back with the tides where you belong. If Dot wishes hard enough on her special stone, maybe the world will slow down and be a little less topsy-turvy. When Dot tossed her wish into the sea, hoping for a friend her age, the stone brought her Sarah. And when the girls worried for the health of Sara’s mother, it made her healthy, and brought Sara her precious Pearl. It’s 1961, and Dot is teetering between childhood and adolescence. At the same time, her rustic world is catching up with the modern towns in the rest of Canada and Dot isn’t sure how she feels about that. Dot enjoys having both a winter and summer home, and knowing every face in three villages. If more changes come, will that mean more people and more noise will come with them? The Wishing Stone & Other Myths, Lessons Learned on Gullcliff Island will take both children and adults back in time through eleven-year-old Dot, a traditional girl coping with her father’s dream of becoming a boat-builder and the realization that Mum and Dad are people with thoughts, emotions, and secrets apart from the family. Alongside her adventurous best friend, Sara, Dot must make ready for the future, whether it be on Gullcliff, in Aylmer Sound, or someplace out of her father’s dream.

In this wise woodland fable, a sulky boy experiences life from the point of view of several forest creatures. Includes Harrison Cady's charming drawings from the century-old original edition.

Spoken by eighty million people, Tamil is one of the great world languages, and one of the few ancient languages that survives as a mother tongue. David Shulman presents a comprehensive cultural history of Tamil, emphasizing how its speakers and poets have understood the unique features of their language over its long history.