In this book, Ollie is feeling a little nervous about starting school the next day. Awoken by an owl, she follows its call into the woods, where she discovers a secret school! By helping the Little Bear she meets settle in to his class, Ollie realises that school can be fun and starts to look forward to her own first day.
Big thanks to The Baby Bookworm for allowing me to use their photo of The Little Bear – their review can be found here. You can also find them on instagram @thebabybookworm
This is the fourth adventure for Ollie and I really loved painting the pictures for this book, especially the classroom scenes and I’m sharing a few of my favourites here. The story-time picture really takes me back to primary school when we would all sit round at the end of the day and be read a story. I went to quite a small village school and I can still remember sitting cross-legged with my hands in my lap as my teacher, Mrs Morton, would read aloud.
The Little Bear was published in the US by Simon & Schuster on 28th June 2022 and Ollie’s Back-to-School Bear is out in the UK on 4th August 2022. It is also available in French, Italian, Japanese and French (Canadian).