Traces the history of marbles and marble making, gives instructions for playing various kinds of games, explains related terms, and suggests further activities.

When friends playing on a Civil War battlefield begin to imitate what happened there, Papaw asks them to quit because he knows a better game.

When he goes to spend the summer with his great-aunt in the family's old house, eleven-year-old Drew is drawn eighty years into the past to trade places with hi