Teacher Kate Henderson sways school trustees to embrace new methods, and the event is represented in the famous painting by Robert Harris: A Meeting of the School Trustees.

Fanny lives in the forest with her meteorologist mother. One day on her way across the forest to visit her grandmother and great grandmother, she has three encounters that will change her life forever: an apparently kind and gentle wolf, a city boy and an ornithologist who bears a striking resemblance to the father who long ago abandoned her and her mother.