All alone, high on the slope of the Little Giant in the French Alps of Saucie, ten-year-old Marcel yodeled lustily to keep himself company. To his astonishment, an answering yodel came from across the valley. That, he knew, was Pierre, guarding his father's herd on the slope of the Big Giant.

Almost every family in the district had a boy looking after its heifers on one of the mountains during the summer; and the inflexible, age-old rule was, "Don't visit, keep to yourself, mind your own business, attend to your own cows and nothing else."

Both Pierre and Marcel knew this. But loneliness tempted them into exchanging friendly signals that made a feeling of comradeship between them. This, in turn, encouraged Marcel to perform an act of neighborliness that could have got him into serious trouble with his father.

But, as it happened, this act was the beginning of a great adventure that ended with the whole village of Monestier rejoicing in the discovery that "there's a better way of life than each man for himself."

All Alone is an exhilarating story, glowing with the beauty of sunny days and starlit nights on the flowery mountain slopes, and continuously alive with the high spirits of two fine boys. Feodor Rojankovsky's pictures, drawn in the very region of Saucie where the story takes place, have the true feeling of the countryside, and of the naturally kindly people whose stubborn independence gives way to good common sense in a crisis.

From the dust jacket