Evgenia Basova’s characters live in harmony with nature, which becomes one of the protagonists in the book. Kolya, a boy from the story "Our Earth Breathes," lives far in the North, in a land of larches and Siberian dwarf pines—a plant that goes to sleep for the winter like a bear. Sasha the scientist, or more accurately, a second-year student, and his eight-year-old neighbor Dimka live in the central region, in the village of Koshkino, lost among the hills. Realistic and almost fairy-tale-like, the two stories complement each other in their own way.
