A wonderfully reassuring tale from master storyteller, Shirley Hughes

Hughes is such a phenomenon -- this is as good as anything she's done."
--"The Observer
"
"Hughes takes the simplest of themes -- and gives it universal significance. Make that
woman a dame!"
--"The Sunday Telegraph"


"From the Hardcover edition.

Shirley was born in West Kirby, near Liverpool, and studied fashion and dress design at Liverpool Art School, before continuing her studies at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art in Oxford. She then embarked on a career as a freelance illustrator in London, where she still lives today. She illustrated other writers' work, including Noel Streatfeild, Alison Uttley, Ian Seraillier, Margaret Mahy and notably Dorothy Edwards's My Naughty Little Sister series. Shirley began to write and draw her own picture books when her children were young. Her first book - Lucy and Tom's Day - was published in 1960, and she followed it with, among others, Dogger and the Alfie series. Shirley received an OBE in 1999 for services to Children's Literature.