Early Years (ages 2-6)

Paul Meets Bernadette

Paul is a fish who used to go around in circles. He made big circles and little circles. He circled from left to right and from right to left. He circled from top to bottom and from bottom to top. What else was there to do? Until one day Bernadette drops in and shows Paul that there is a whole world out there, right outside his bowl, with so many things to see. A banana-shaped boat! A blue elephant with a spoutlike trunk (be quiet when she’s feeding her babies)! A lovely lunetta butterfly, with tortoise-shell rims!

Edda

Edda, the littlest Valkyrie, leaves the magical land of Asgard to attend school in hopes of making a friend her own age, but feels like an outcast until she finds her courage and learns that being different makes her special.

Queen On Wednesday

On Wednesday, Thelma is bored—so she decides to become a queen. She makes the royal announcement on Thursday and chooses the royal pets on Friday. But she needs a castle to keep the pets, and royally qualified trainers to tame them, and of course someone to clean up after the messes. It’s enough to give a queen a royal headache. And when Thelma realizes that there aren’t enough beds to hold her royal staff, she flings off her crown and decides that maybe being a regular girl isn’t so boring after all.

An Evening at Alfie’s

Mum and Dad have gone out for the night, leaving Maureen McNally to look after Alfie and Annie Rose. When disaster strikes and a water pipe starts leaking, Alfie helps Maureen halt the flood and also helps Annie Rose with some waterwork problems of her own.

Walking Through The Jungle

As she walks through the jungle, floats in the ocean, and treks in the desert on her way around the world, a daring young traveler spies nothing alarming — at first. But what’s that lurking in the jungle bush? Or hiding at the bottom of the river? Or coiled up near the cactus? A pleasure to pore over, the boisterously colored artwork captures a world of creatures large and small — and mostly well-behaved — from a variety of intriguing habitats. Very simply written and perfectly pitched for chanting along, the rhyming text is also ideally suited for emerging readers.