A boy takes his pet cricket to school where it first disturbs the class with its chirping, but then becomes the show-and-tell attraction.

Unhappy because he cannot sing with his schoolmates in the Christmas pageant, Jamie, a mute boy, is allowed to play a shepherd. A blizzard necessitates the cancellation of the pageant, but Jamie's imagination and loving nature find a special use for his shepherd robe and crook.

Relates the episodes in the life of Contrary Jenkins as he lived by the "law of contrary" in Tennessee and Arkansas.

A poetic description of a desert and its inhabitants.