Sophie Blackall

"Everyone needs things to look forward to-big things and small things, on good days and on bad days; things that will buoy our spirits and make us laugh and help us feel alive. In these pages, beloved author and illustrator Sophie Blackall has gathered a collection of joyful things for all of us: things that are always there if we look for them, like the sun coming up; things we can do if the sun is behind a cloud, like baking for other people or...

Sooner or later, every child will ask, Where do babies come from? Answering this question has never been this easy or entertaining! Join a curious little boy who asks everyone from his babysitter to the mailman, getting all sorts of funny answers along the way, before his parents gently set him straight.

When Bean's parents leave her in the care of her older sister Nancy for the afternoon, she enlists her neighbor and best friend Ivy to come over and teach Nancy how to be a really good babysitter.

"We shall all, in the end, be led to where we belong. We shall all, in the end, find our way home. In a time of war, a mysterious child appears at the monastery of the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowing. Gentle Brother Edik finds the girl, Beatryce, curled in a stall, wracked with fever, coated in dirt and blood, and holding fast to the ear of Answelica the goat. As the monk nurses Beatryce to health, he uncovers her dangerous secret, one that imperils...

A woman tells her young son the true story of how his great-great-grandfather, Captain Harry Colebourn, rescued and learned to love a bear cub in 1914 as he was on his way to take care of soldiers' horses during World War I, and the bear became the inspiration for A.A. Milne's Winnie-the-Pooh.

Ivy and Bean try to make money by writing a newspaper about Pancake Court but the neighbors are not pleased to read about themselves.

Bean's older sister, Nancy, is going to Girl Power 4-Ever Camp, where she will do Crafts and Music and First Aid and other secret things that Bean will never know about because girls have to be eleven to go to Girl Power 4-Ever Camp. Bean doesn't care. She doesn't want to go to camp. She wouldn't go even if they begged her. So ha. So ha ha. So-wait a second! Bean and Ivy can make their own camp, their own better camp: Camp Flaming Arrow, where counselors...

After watching a movie about a detective on the television, Bean decides to set up shop as a private investigator--and she and Ivy start looking for mysteries to solve.

It is very hard to be friends with wild boars because they are dirty and smelly, bad-tempered, and rude.

A farmhouse provides the setting for a dozen children to live and grow, and when they leave, another family arrives to fill the house with love again.