Two days before Christmas, the Martinez family has been busy getting ready for the holidays. The mother Sarah is frantically making cookies, wondering why Christmas has to be so hard and worrying about her environmentalist husband who is out in the Gulf of Mexico, doing an underwater video shoot.
Fifteen-year-old Rob Martinez is like any typical teenager. Yes, he even writes songs. And when he gets bored, he likes to tease and play jokes on his sister, seven-year-old Katie. Their dog, a big golden Labrador, named Charlie seems oblivious to everything around him, sleeping most of the time, but when Charlie does awaken, he will make a difference!
Rob continually monitors the computer, waiting for a live video feed that their father, Jim, will be sending from his underwater video shoot in the Gulf of Mexico. Jim wants to show the importance of preserving abandoned oil rigs, to save the ecosystems of marine life -- which include endangered species, like sea turtles -- that have developed around these rigs.
The family plans to put on a play on Christmas Eve their second annual production -- The Night the Animals Talked -- in their front year. The grandmother, Mammaw, who wrote the play, based it on the Norwegian legend that on the night Christ was born, the animals talked. In the midst of all this holiday fun and craziness, getting ready to practice the play, a crisis occurs in the Gulf, which could spell tragedy and a very sad Christmas for the family.
Will there be a happy ending? Can miracles really happen? And if so, will there be a miracle that relates directly to the title of the book, The Night the Animals Talked?
