BONUS: This edition contains an excerpt from Sandra Kring's A Life of Bright Ideas. Wisconsin, 1961. Evelyn “Button” Peters is nine the summer Winnalee and her fiery-spirited older sister, Freeda, blow into her small town–and from the moment she sees them, Button knows this will be a summer unlike any other. Much to her mother’s dismay, Button is fascinated by the Malone sisters, especially Winnalee, a feisty scrap of a thing who carries around a shiny silver urn containing her mother’s ashes and a tome she calls “The Book of Bright Ideas.” It is here, Winnalee tells Button, that she records everything she learns: her answers to the mysteries of life. But sometimes those mysteries conceal a truth better left buried. And when a devastating secret is suddenly revealed, dividing loyalties and uprooting lives, no one–from Winnalee and her sister to Button and her family–will ever be the same.

Benjamin Bear, accompanied by his faithful rabbit friend, continues to share his observations and questions about the world around him.

A secret tore best friends Evelyn “Button” Peters and Winnalee Malone apart. Now, nearly a decade later, a secret brings them back together. Nine years ago Button and Winnalee began recording observations in their Book of Bright Ideas, a tome they believed would solve the mystery of how to live a mistake-free life. Now it’s 1970, a time of peace, love, war, and personal heartbreak. Button’s mother is dead and her grieving father has all but abandoned his children. Quiet, thoughtful Button has traded college for a sewing job in her mother’s bridal shop to help her Aunt Verdella raise her whirlwind six-year-old brother. In Button’s free time, she writes letters to the boy she loved from afar through high school, hoping he will come to love her as more than a friend. Then, like that magical Wisconsin summer of ’61, Button is greeted with the wild, gusty arrival of Winnalee. Now a beautiful flower child, Winnalee is everything Button is not. She’s been to Woodstock and enjoys “free love,” but their steadfast bond of friendship is tested as Button begins to notice the cracks in Winnalee’s carefree façade. And then Winnalee’s mother arrives with a surprise that Button never sees coming, and the fiery determination to put things right in both families once and for all.

The Bright Idea Series are stories based on Mr. Watts—a light stand that magically comes to life. He lives in apartment number 4, where he befriends and advises the children that pass through. Mr. Watts assists them in finding solutions to their problems and helps them to see how each family is special. At the end of each story, the reader is invited to share their Bright Idea for today.

'Not for the faint-hearted.' Scotsman What do you do when the life you’ve carefully built for yourself comes apart? Lydia Smith lives a quiet life, spent in the company of her colleagues and customers at the bookstore where she works. But when Joey Molina, a young and mysterious regular, hangs himself in the bookstore and leaves Lydia secret messages hidden in the pages of his books, her world starts to unravel. Why did Joey do it? What did he know? And what does it have to do with Lydia?

THE STORY: How far would you go for your child? For Genevra and Joshua Bradley, the question is no longer hypothetical. Their three-year-old son, Mac, is next on the waiting list to get into the Bright Ideas Early Childhood Development Academy--and

"Good Earth Art" contains over 200 easy fun art projects that develop an awareness of the environment and a caring attitude towards the earth. Projects use common materials collected from nature or recycled. The book is filled with sensible creative ideas to help recycle and reuse through art, for all ages, and includes a charted Table of Contents, two indexes, and a great list of environmental resources. 1992 Benjamin Franklin Gold Award 1992 Midwest Book Association Gold Award for Excellence