Dear Luba, she lives so happily in her dacha in the country with her mama and papa--until she helps a frightened wren! She only means to be kind to the wren, as she would any creature, but when the wren returns the favor, how Luba's life changes! "Ask for anything you wish", the wren says. Luba wants nothing, but her mama and papa want a rich estate, then to be lords, then czar and czarina--then rulers of the world! Where will it end?

In this blazing texture of color, Patricia Polacco brings to her many readers a Russian-style turn on The Fisherman and His Wife, introducing an enchanting new character whose love for simplicity wins the day, as well as her parents' lives.