Mabel, Gus, and the snail gather around the dry white eggs under their tiny leaf roof in a sunny cabbage garden.

A PICTURE BOOK

Mabel Mole and the Daytime Stars

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Mabel Mole and the Daytime Stars

Mabel, a small brown mole in an orange scarf, looks from her tunnel across a lawn dotted with tiny white eggs beneath a pear tree.

Mabel Mole liked the garden best before breakfast. The grass was wet. The stones were cool. Beneath the old pear tree, the soil smelled like warm brown bread.

One morning, Mabel poked her nose from her tunnel and blinked. Tiny white dots covered the lawn.

“Stars!” she squeaked.

But the sky was bright blue. The real stars had gone home.

Mabel and a large white goose look at a green snail on a cabbage leaf, where one small white egg rests on the snail’s shiny trail.

Mabel hurried to Gus Goose, who was splashing in his pond. “Did the stars fall down?”

Gus peered at the dots. “Honk! They are far too small to be stars.”

Mabel followed one white dot to the vegetable patch. A snail slid across a cabbage leaf, with a white dot clinging to its shiny trail.

“Those are eggs,” said the snail. “Little snail eggs. My nest broke in the night rain.”

Mabel raises her paws as Gus the goose freezes with one huge webbed foot lifted above a tiny white egg on the grass.

Mabel looked across the lawn. Eggs lay beside the path, near the pond, and beneath the pear tree. One egg rolled toward Gus’s big webbed foot.

“Stop!” cried Mabel.

Gus froze with one foot in the air. The egg stopped just before his toes.

“We need a safe place,” said Mabel.

Mabel, Gus, and the snail watch a large raindrop bend a green leaf over a small nest of white eggs in the cabbage patch.

Mabel dug a small round bowl in the soft soil beside the cabbage patch. Gus carried dry leaves in his beak. The snail brought a smooth leaf to cover the top.

Then a fat raindrop fell. Plop! The leaf roof bent.

“My roof is too floppy,” said the snail sadly.

In the rain, Mabel and Gus stand beside the snail’s egg nest, now sheltered by a green leaf held up on small twig posts.

Mabel thought for a moment. Then she dug three little holes around the nest. Gus found three short twigs. Mabel pushed each twig into a hole, and Gus laid the leaf across them.

Plip. Plip. The rain began again.

The leaf roof stayed firm. Under it, the tiny eggs stayed dry.

By afternoon, the rain had stopped. Sunlight shone through the pear leaves. The white eggs glimmered beneath their little roof.

“They are daytime stars after all,” said Gus.

Mabel smiled and patted the soil around the nest. “Yes,” she said. “But these stars will crawl.”