"It was Danny's birthday and his folks said he could get any kind of animal he wanted for a pet. Danny thought it over before he went to bed. 'All I really want is a turtle,'" he said. But instead, his family gets him a dog, a kitten, a rat, and a bird. Danny shakes his head after each gift is offered until finally he receives the present he's wished for all along. Accompanying each amusing stanza are Kevin O Malley's cheerful illustrations using design markers and colored pencil.

Robert Browning, whose normality in appearance and conversation pleased sensible folk and shocked idolaters, summed up in two stanzas the difference between the popular conception of a poet and the real truth. One might almost take the first stanza as representing the Irish and the second the English temperament.