The second title in the acclaimed easy reader series, now with a new look!

Walter is so excited that his favorite cousin, Howie, is coming to visit. He is sure that Iris will like Howie as much as he does. But nine year-old Howie has other plans . . . and none of them include Iris.

Iris thought that having a baby sister would be just like playing with a doll. But newborn Baby Rose is a crabby cake. She fusses and cries and wails so much that Iris decides she needs a new baby sister. But with a little help from her family and her best friend, Walter--and with the passage of time--Iris discovers that being a big sister can be fun . . . some of the time!

When best friends Iris and Walter go on a field trip to an aquarium, Walter gets lost and a worried Iris helps Miss Cherry look for him.

Iris is devastated when she has to miss her first school play when she is sick.

"First published in Great Britain in 2013 by Simon & Schuster UK Ltd"--Copyright page.

In three separate episodes Fox wants to play with his friends, but duty, in one form or another, always interferes.

Dessert Schneider has her very own personal style. But sometimes walking to the beat of her own drum means walking right into a heap of mischief, especially when it comes to the legendary family recipe (and Dessert's all-time favorite treat), Grandma Reine's Double-Decker Chocolate Bars. As the oldest in a rambunctious, restaurant-owning family, with a four-year-old sister who is going through a “phase” and two little brothers called “the Beasties,” Dessert seems to be better at getting into trouble than getting out of it. And that's because for this eight-year-old, saying sorry is definitely not a piece o'cake!

Growing up in Boiling Springs, North Carolina, in the '70s and '80s, Linda Hammerick knows that she is different. She has strong, almost paralysing associations between words and tastes; she doesn't look like everyone else; and she isn't popular at school. She finds her way through life with the help of her great uncle 'Baby' Harper, who loves her and loves to dance, and her best friend fat-thin-fat Kelly with whom she has been exchanging letters since they were seven. But then a tragedy and a revelation will make her question everything she thought she knew about herself and her family.

For the first time, novelist Iris Murdoch's life in her own words, from girlhood to her last years Iris Murdoch was an acclaimed novelist and groundbreaking philosopher whose life reflected her unconventional beliefs and values. But what has been missing from biographical accounts has been Murdoch's own voice—her life in her own words. Living on Paper—the first major collection of Murdoch's most compelling and interesting personal letters—gives, for the first time, a rounded self-portrait of one of the twentieth century's greatest writers and thinkers. With more than 760 letters, fewer than forty of which have been published before, the book provides a unique chronicle of Murdoch's life from her days as a schoolgirl to her last years. The result is the most important book about Murdoch in more than a decade. The letters show a great mind at work—struggling with philosophical problems, trying to bring a difficult novel together, exploring spirituality, and responding pointedly to world events. They also reveal her personal life, the subject of much speculation, in all its complexity, especially in letters to lovers or close friends, such as the writers Brigid Brophy, Elias Canetti, and Raymond Queneau, philosophers Michael Oakeshott and Philippa Foot, and mathematician Georg Kreisel. We witness Murdoch's emotional hunger, her tendency to live on the edge of what was socially acceptable, and her irreverence and sharp sense of humor. We also learn how her private life fed into the plots and characters of her novels, despite her claims that they were not drawn from reality. Direct and intimate, these letters bring us closer than ever before to Iris Murdoch as a person, making for an extraordinary reading experience.