Abigail D. Brown was like most eight-year-old girls her age: creative, inquisitive, and precocious, though perhaps taller than some. She spent most of her summers exploring the woods behind her house. Her mother called it a “green space,” but to Abbie it was the forest, and if you called a forest by any other name, it lost some of its inherent magic.

The early summer day began with a rainstorm that blanketed the town in a thick humidity unusual for Oregon. By midday, the humidity had burned off, giving way to the sort of dry heat that singes bare feet on stone pathways baking in the sun. Abbie sat on a mossy stump, watching gold-fuzzed bees swarm the petite white blooms of a blackberry bramble, and she anticipated the bountiful harvest she’d enjoy in the coming months. Picking berries and eating them until her fingers and lips (and clothes, to her mother’s private horror) stained purple was one of her favorite things about summer.

Abbie was often alone (if you don’t count her parents’ company), but she didn’t mind. She had friends among the other kids in the neighborhood, but she tended toward solitary flights of fancy, playing with her dog, and scribbling stories in a battered notebook in her large, childish handwriting. The other children seemed to prefer playing video games and watching other people play video games on the internet. Abbie’s parents didn’t have the internet or a television in their house. Her father homeschooled her, which meant she could focus on subjects that interested her. Dan, her father, brought her outside to enjoy their lessons in the fresh air when the weather was fine. Of course, the Oregon weather was often dreary or cloudy, but bundling up in raincoats and splashing about in mud puddles was almost as fun as running barefoot in the woods during the summer.

Abbie looked down at her dirty toes and wiggled them. If they were here, Mom would make her put her sandals back on (in case she stepped on something sharp), but Dad would wink and tell her to enjoy herself. After a few moments of toe wiggling, she slipped her flip-flops back on and stood up. The bees buzzed around her as she meandered past the tangle of thorny vines into a mass of tall clover growing under enormous fir trees. “Come on Sammy,” she called.

Sammy, her little Jack Russell terrier, bounded out of the bushes and nearly took her out at the knees. Abbie knelt and ruffled his ears.

“Who’s a good booooy,” she crooned, and Sammy wagged his tail and licked her face, much to her delight. “You’re all dirty!” she cried, fending off his licks. “C’mon, I’m hungry. Let’s get something to eat.” Sammy barked, turning a quick circle in his excitement.

She pressed her hand to her stomach as it rumbled and looked up through the trees at the blue sky. The sun was well overhead, which meant it was close to noon. Abbie picked up the pace, running down her trail, toward her hidden lunchbox with Sammy at her heels. She’d stashed it in the cool, dark shadow of a fallen log, and...

Children tend to embrace the world around them as they experience it—with wonder and delight at each new discovery. An adult may view dandelions merely as pesky weeds, but to the young they are golden flowers that greet the sun and hide from the...

She must be running late. Dan Brown looked at the lengthening shadows in the backyard and leaned on the back fence. “Abbie!” he called into the trees, listening for the telltale sounds of Sammy or for his daughter’s voice calling after the pup.

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The howls sounded closer, their haunting calls bouncing off the trees, but Abbie was more concerned with keeping up with Foster as he dashed through the forest, clutching her by the hand. She wanted to look behind, to see what might be chasing...