Excerpt:

Prologue
Lottie Cook’s mother died the same minute that Lottie was born. Her father said she came into this world with her eyes wide open, and that may be the reason why her earliest memories were amazingly clear. She remembered the cold metal of the hospital crib and the flat, tinny taste of powdered baby formula. She did! She remembered her father’s long, lonely hands holding her, carrying her home from the hospital by himself. She remembered his wide, flat smile the first time she ever saw it.

Remembering was Lottie’s avocation. She had started by collecting stories about the mother that she never knew. Even when she was a tiny child, her father depended on her to gather the memories, keep them safe, and share them. When she was three, four years old, she was a miniature storyteller telling tiny, miniature stories.

The first magic thing happened to Lottie when she turned eleven years old. That was the year that her great adventures began. But to fully understand these things, it’s best to go backward a bit, to a rainy summer morning years earlier, when six-year-old Lottie was banging on a locked door.

Chapter One: The Story Box

Lottie and her father lived alone in a strange little house in the middle of an Iowa cornfield. This particular stormy morning, six-year-old Lottie was locked out of her father’s Building Room. It was a week before the first day of first grade. She was peeking through the gaping crack at the bottom of the crooked, homemade door when she heard the sound of shuffling feet. She didn’t have to look up; she knew that shuffle by heart.

“Lewis, take a look,” Lottie whispered.

Mrs. Weaver tied a little notebook to Lewis every morning, with the idea that he would at least communicate by writing and drawing. And every evening she fussed when his notebook was only filled with strange symbols and squiggles that communicated precious little. Grown-ups in town felt certain that all this would change in just a few days when Lewis was required by law to start first grade and Things Would Be Expected Of Him.

Lewis tried to pry open the Building Room door for a peek, but it was bolted tight. He rattled the doorknob.

“Keep out!” Lottie’s father bellowed through the locked door. “It’s not finished! It’s a present for your first day of school!”

Lottie calmly shook her head. “I’m not going to school,” she said evenly to Lewis.

Kindergarten was optional in Oxford, Iowa, and so Lottie and Lewis had opted out last year. They were both plenty smart, and the town kindergarten, run by Miss Connie in her ranch house behind the post office, seemed like a colossal waste of time. Miss Connie taught advanced classes such as “Sharing: It’s Not Always Your Turn” and “Glue: Not for Eating.” Last year, Lottie and Lewis, who could read when they were three and write when they were four, had written and illustrated an essay outlining why they didn’t need to go to kindergarten. Without consulting their parents, they had submitted the essay directly to Miss Connie. Miss Connie, embarrassed and offended, phoned their parents to say that the kindergarten class was full.

The same approach had not worked regarding first grade, but they hadn’t given up yet. “I’m not going to school,” Lottie repeated to the locked door. “Ever.”

“Oh yes you are,” her father barked back definitively.

“My mother says school is wonderful,” Lewis said without conviction. Lottie and Lewis looked at each other and then burst out laughing. Nearly everything that Mrs. Weaver said made them laugh. She was always wrong.

Lewis’s father had disappeared when Lewis was three. Mr. Weaver had been a brilliant scientist. No one ever spoke about him anymore and Lewis and Lottie had the distinct feeling that everyone was afraid to even mention him. When he vanished Mrs. Weaver simply acted as though he had never existed.

Mrs. Weaver was an unpleasant woman who wore a perpetual pucker, as though she were sucking lemons dry, Lottie said. Her brow was always furrowed. Her fists were always clenched. It was a shame.

But at least they had Lottie’s father, who loved them both. Eldon Cook was a shadowy man with the longest fingers you ever saw. He was somewhat somber to the rest of the world, but when he looked at Lottie his smile could light up a room. He loved her plain brown hair. He loved the seven freckles on the bridge of her nose. He loved the deep well he fell into when he looked at her hazel eyes. And he loved the way those eyes seemed to change color with the weather. He had one treasure in this world and it was Lottie.

Late that evening, after Lewis and Lottie had made their own supper (corn bread, corn mash and leftover Iowa cut-corn), and after Lewis had been dragged home through the rain, Lottie heard the Building Room lock turning. At last, Mr. Cook emerged with something under his arm.

It was wrapped in an old quilt, but it looked to be almost the size of a shoebox. “Ready?” he asked. Lottie nodded and he let her unfold the quilt.

It was, well, a shoe box. A wooden shoe box with a wooden lid that fit neatly on top. It was cherry wood, and Lottie instantly worried that he had cut down the old cherry tree by the back door. It was polished a deep, shiny, black cherry color.

“You have the best memory of anybody I’ve met, Lottie. You remember big things and little things and things that never even happened. There is room in that pointy head of yours to soak up everything that goes on around you. But school is coming.”

Lottie rolled her eyes as if to say We’ll see about that, while Mr. Cook opened the box. The inside was brighter cherry and almost seemed to glow in the darkening room.

“At school,” her father continued, “there’ll be other things to remember, crowding your brain. Like five plus eight. And how to spell Arkansas.”

“Five plus eight equals thirteen,” said Lottie.

Mr. Cook laughed and messed up her hair.

“A-r-k-a-n-s-a-s,” Lottie spelled.

“I know you already know everything, but you still have to go to school. So...”--he smiled, pleased with himself--“that’s why you’ll need this.”

Lottie just stared.

“It’s a StoryBox,” her father continued. “In this box, you keep little bits and pieces of every story you need to remember. That way, when your head fills with school facts you won’t run out of room and forget the truly important things.” He kissed the top of her head and pressed the box into her arms.

Lottie held the smooth box, and it felt warm in her hands. “Did you cut down my cherry tree?”

“Well, now, Lottie... Yes and no.”

Lottie bit her lip and twisted her hands and walked to look out the kitchen window. She pushed it open and leaned out into the storm. There, through the streaming rain, she could see-- nothing. Where her favorite tree should have been was a bare patch in the yard.

“It was hit by lightning last night, Lottie,” her father said quietly. “The tree wouldn’t have survived. But you can have the box to keep forever.”

Lottie wasn’t pleased. She told a story quickly... “I remember,” Lottie began quietly, “I remember... that tree grew before I was born when Mama spit a cherry seed from the kitchen window, and she sang to that tree every morning while she waited for her tea water to boil. And when she was gone and I was a baby, I slept on my back under cherry flowers and I could still hear her singing...”

Her father was smiling quietly at her, waiting.

“We could have tried to save my tree,” she said.

“I don’t think it would have made it.”

“But it might have.”

How could she accept a gift that had taken her memory tree away? The more she thought about it, the more furious she became with her father. “This box is very small,” she said coldly. “It won’t hold much.”

Thunder rumbled through the cornfields outside. The box seemed to shimmer when the lightning flashed and the thunder boomed closer to home. Mr. Cook’s wide, flat smile spread until he was grinning ear to ear. “I already thought of that. Just give it a try.”

But Lottie didn’t.