The hard-working daughter of two bakers and a perfectly nice stray dog live lonely lives in the same town, until they meet one very stormy day.

"There was once a tiny man. One day, at the first sign of spring, he decided to pin a note to a tree that said FRIEND WANTED. Then he sat down on the step to wait. After ten days, he woke to find a cold nose in his hand. Beside him was a big dog with a beautiful curve in its tail. The tiny man had made a friend at last. They play and walk and laugh every day. But then the girl in the polka dot dress comes to the step. The little man watches as the...

She's just a tiny slip of paper, a doodle cut in the shape of a bird. She isn't sure who made her or how she came to be, or if the family she lives with even knows she is there. She turns found objects into things of beauty-sometimes leaving them for the child of the house to discover-and invents riveting tales to tell to the wall outlet. And now, in her grandest adventure yet, the dauntless artist makes something thoroughly unexpected: a friend....