A Year Around The Great Oak

OakBenjamin and Anna love staying with their cousin Robin in his house near the forest. In the autumn, Robin takes them to see his favourite tree–a giant oak that is 300 years old. The children build a den under the oak tree’s giant branches and watch the squirrels hide acorns in its wide trunk.

In the winter they ski through the forest and meet the foresters who chose which trees will become firewood this year–but not their beautiful oak tree!

In the spring the children go searching for badgers and see many animals that live in the forest–nesting birds, gentle deer and shy rabbits. One night, the tree helps Benjamin when he discovers a creature he didn’t expect. How can the children say thank you?

Jumping Penguins And Laughing Hyenas

If a camel gets angry, he will throw up green gastric juice over you. A sloth moves so slowly that green algae grows in his fur. Even a blind chameleon takes the color of its surroundings. Bologna Ragazzi Award winner Marije Tolman, creator of The Tree House and The Island, illustrates in her distinctive style curious, funny, bizarre, unbelievable, disgusting and weird facts about fifty different animals. The animal facts are straightforward nonfiction, Marije Tolman’s illustrations are pure fantasy, creating a combination that is sure to engage readers.

Friends

Happy was an international hit that showed off Mies van Hout’s uncanny ability to convey feelings with her vibrant illustrations.

With Friends she goes one step further and shows emotional interactions. Just as she made the fish of Happy uniquely hers, here she uses monsters to show different situations–they cuddle, laugh, play, but they also fight, tease and more–making the images recognizable for little monsters of all ages.

A Thousand Things about Holland

This companion paperback to the wordless picture book Holland explains all the details of every amazing picture, making
this book an armchair travel guide for anyone already fond of this small country of tulips, windmills and so much more.

The Sea Man

When sailors aboard a Dutch ship in 1663 capture a creature, half man and half fish, the superstitious crewmen want to kill it, except for a young cabin boy who believes that the creature deserves to live.

Mother Number Zero

Fay was adopted when he was a baby and lives in the Netherlands. He knows only that his birth mother escaped the war in Bosnia and that he arrived in his adopted home with nothing more than a squeaky toy and a few clothes. His older sister Bing was adopted too, from China, where she was found abandoned on the street. While drawing birds at the aviary in the park, his favorite passtime, Fay meets Maud the new girl in town. Maud who urges him to search for his birth mother. With mixed feelings, Fay, along with his parents, pursues the search, but this creates mayhem at home, since there is no possibility of Bing ever being able to find her birth mother. Fay’s complicated feelings about searching for his mother and his ambivalent feelings for Maud unfold in this compelling story of finding your true identity.

Crusade in Jeans

Fifteen-year-old Dolf uses a prototype time machine and gets stuck in the Middle Ages. Trying to find his way back to the twentieth century, he joins a children’s crusade of almost ten thousand children on their way to the Holy Land. Dolf helps the children defy the terrible mountains, conquer disease and fight evil knights. Slowly, Dolf begins to realize that the real danger does not lurk behind the next mountaintop, but rather within the crusade itself.