"Ten Best Books of Year" (New York Times) Best Books of 1990 (Parents Magazine) Top Books of Century (Dillon's/UK) Silver Stylus Award (Netherlands) and others

Little Beaver and the Echo Ages: 2 - 7 G.P. Putnam's Sons ISBN 0-698-11628-3 * To order paperback in English from your local independent book store (which is a GOOD thing!), click here. To order from Amazon,click here. * To order in hardcover from amazon.co.UK *The CD: ISBN 0-7445-8656-9. A 64-minute CD, read by British actress Jane Horrocks, contains the story, along with music and activities that children can dance, play and sing along to, in groups or alone. To order, click here.. To order bi-lingual version, click here.

What's it about? Little Beaver has no brothers or sisters. Worst of all, he has no friends. One day he starts to cry by the side of the pond. When he hears someone else crying from loneliness on the other side of the pond, he sets off in his boat to find him. He never discovers who is crying, but he discovers something else even more important.

Where did the idea come from? One day when my son, Alexander, was about 18 months old, I took him to visit a pond in New Hampshire where I had spent my childhood summers. I remembered that the pond had an echo, so I showed him how to shout "Hello!" so that the echo would answer "Hello!" Just as we turned to leave, Alex asked me what an echo was. I knew I couldn't explain to a one-year-old how an echo worked, so instead I said I would write him a story that would help him understand what an echo was. I sat down and did it, right then and there.

Why a beaver? Well, it just so happens that the pond we were visiting had beavers on it: I knew that because when I was little I used to get in my boat at dusk and go out and watch them building their dams at the mouth of the pond. There were also lots of turtles and every now and then some ducks and very rarely an otter.

How long did it take? I wrote it in about 45 minutes. The story came to me very quickly - so quickly I was a little suspicious of it. I spent only about ten minutes on the beginning and middle of the story - and the rest of the time on the ending. Which shows you how important it is to get an ending just right.

What some reviewers said: Little Beaver has now been published in over 20 languages around the world. It has won awards in the Netherlands, Great Britain, and the US. Bookseller called it "the perfect picture book." Parents magazine described it as a "heartwarming story about the beginnings of friendship." The Sunday Times said it "gets the mixture, for child and adult, just right and is a story of enormous charm." The BBC called it "a lovely, stunningly simple, deft story with a kind of classic feel to it." The New York Times called it "enchanting" and Artemis Cooper, writing for The Mail on Sunday, dubbed it an "all-time great."

Classroom Activities to accompany Little Beaver and the Echo. For additional acitivities, see the Little Beaver CD (details below)

Special Editions of Little Beaver and the Echo

Bilingual Editions: Little Beaver and the Echo has been published in over 25 languages, including special bilingual editions. The English/Somali and English/Vietnamese are available from Amazon.com (check out "All Editions" of Little Beaver). The English/Bengali, Chinese, Urdu, and Punjabi editions are available from Amazon's British counterpart, Amazon.co.UK

Anthologies: Little Beaver appears in several anthologies: The Walker Book of Animal Tales and The New Walker Bear: A Children's Treasury, both from Walker Books Ltd (UK).

Mini-version: A 4"x5" hardcover version is now available from Walker Books Ltd. or Amazon.co.UK