In nineteenth-century China, in a remote Hunan county, a girl named Lily, at the tender age of seven, is paired with a laotong, "old same," in an emotional match that will last a lifetime. The laotong, Snow Flower, introduces herself by sending Lily a silk fan on which she's painted a poem in nu shu, a unique language that Chinese women created in order to communicate in secret, away from the influence of men. As the years pass, Lily and Snow Flower...

A small boy tries to discover the meaning of "memory" so he can restore that of an elderly friend.

In 1922 Petey, who has cerebral palsy, is misdiagnosed as an idiot and institutionalized; sixty years later, still in the institution, he befriends a boy and shares with him the joy of life.

A young python does not want to grow slow and boring like the older snakes he sees in the tropical jungle where he lives.

When he gets too old to climb up the ladder, Mr. Putter and his cat Tabby figure out an ingenious way to pick pears for pear jelly.

Old Sarah knits mittens for all the children waiting for the school bus and hangs them on the blue spruce tree at the bus stop.

When an old woman gets sick and her garden begins to die, the doodle bugs call on the Leaf Men to make things right again.