There is no night so dark, so black as night in the country. And while the people dream of daytime things, the nighttime world awakens. Owls swoop, a rabbit patters, and in the yard an apple falls -- pump! -- from the tree. Listen. Go to the window. Across the field a light glows. Who else is up so late? Who else watches and hears the sights and sounds of night in the country -- the many stirrings of silence, the many colors of the dark? Lyrical text...

As money is short in seven-year-old Charlie's Appalachian home during the Civil War and there is not enough to buy the straw hat that Charlie wants to wear to school, he and his grandmother decide to make a hat themselves.