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Pages 1 - 11

• The story opens with twelve-year-old Douglas Spaulding waking up in his grandparents' three-story boarding house on the first day of summer in 1928.

• They all live in Green Town, Illinois.

• Douglas believes this will be a special day because a spider web broke across his face when he passed through it.
• Douglas' father takes him and his brother into the forest to collect fox grapes and wild strawberries.

• The father believes that being in nature makes everything better and even taste better, but Douglas doesn't quite feel the same way yet.

• Eventually, Douglas feels a 'thing' pass over him and he begins to feel joy at being truly, fantastically alive like his brother (Tom) and his father both seem to feel.

Pages 12 - 25

• Douglas and his brother, Tom, both went to collect dandelions for their grandfather who pays the boys ten cents a bag to collect them...

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