The Wump World is an unspoiled place until huge monsters bring hordes of tiny creatures from the planet Pollutus.

"Mab is the "normal" one, never mind Bourne Memorial High School has banned that term, and besides, she's a stickler for words and definitions and knows normal isn't normal in Bourne. Monday is a stickler for everything else. She doesn't like abbreviations, contractions, lies, typos, or wearing green clothes on yellow days. When the Bourne library shut down-funds desperately needed elsewhere-she stashed the books under her bed, behind the sofa, along...

The death of her mother brings writer Annie Barnes back to the New Hampshire mill town of her youth to investigate the pollution caused by the local paper mill, a contamination that may have been the cause of her mother's fatal illness.

The Once-ler describes the results of the local pollution problem.