"It's twilight!" the little girl announces to the city. "It's twilight!" As the keeper of the twilight, she must busy herself with the things that come before the day changes into night. So in a dreamlike sequence, she leaves her mother's side in order to polish the stars and read the sun a story so it can go off to sleep. She cautions creatures of the night -- coyotes and an owl -- to wait just a while more and then persuades the moon to rise before returning to her mother's side, her work finished.

David McPhail's sumptuous watercolors perfectly capture the breathtaking delicacy of the twilight sky as the little girl makes her way out of the big city and into a spectacular fantasy landscape and visits each comforting bedtime symbol.