Pay It Forward is a wondrous and moving novel about Trevor McKinney, a twelve-year-old boy in a small California town who accepts a challenge from his teacher. This challenge offers a chance to earn extra credit by coming up with a plan to change the world for the better—and to put that plan into action.

The idea that Trevor comes up with is so simple and so naive that when others learn of it, they are dismissive. Even Trevor himself begins to doubt when his "pay it forward" plan seems to founder on a combination of bad luck and the worst of human nature.

In the end, Pay It Forward is the story of seemingly ordinary people made extraordinary by the simple faith of a child. It is a story of hope for today and for many tomorrows to come.

Long before environmental consciousness became popular, a young nature writer named Opal Whiteley captured America's heart. Opal's childhood diary, published in 1902, became an immediate bestseller, one of the most talked-about books of its time.

Wistful, funny, and wise, it was described by an admirer as the revelation of the life of a feminine Peter Pan of the Oregon wilderness—so innocent, so intimate, so haunting, that I should not know where in all literature to look for a counterpart.

But the diary soon fell into disgrace. Condemning it as an adult-written hoax, skeptics stirred a scandal that drove the book into obscurity and shattered the frail spirit of its author.

Discovering the diary by chance, bestselling author Benjamin Hoff set out to solve the longstanding mystery of its origin. His biography of Opal that accompanies the diary provides fascinating proof that the document is indeed authentic—the work of a magically gifted child, America's forgotten interpreter of nature.