Adam, while taking a break from school work, tries out a new tube of "special" bubbles and finds that they can be connected. As they grow, he eventually he is able to enter them, and the bubbles shrink him to the size of an ant. By jumping up and down and with a puff of breeze, Adam ends up in a tree. He finds friends and excitement in his backyard as he tries to go back to his normal size. Along the way, he gets to know a number organisms like a fungi, a bee, a wood roach, a cricket, an ant, and others who help him and also teach him about their lives and how they work to make a life, a home, and incidentally a great soil for his garden. After this adventure, Adam goes back into a bubble to visit his soil friends and ends up being blown into a snag, a seemingly lifeless tree. With the help of a squirrel, Trouble, he and Kit, his friend the cricket, travel down the snag in their bubble. They meet the creatures who live in the dead tree. Emerging out of a hole in the base of the snag, they are blown into a storm. Kit is able to leap out of the bubble and Adam travels in the bubble down the hill on storm runoff. He ends up in a pool of the creek. Along the way, he gets to know about storm water and how it affects the creatures to have to live in it. Although fiction, the book describes the very real aspects of soil and its production, life in a snag, and issues related to water from storms and how it impacts streams.