YOU'RE ALL MY FAVOURITES

by SAM McBRATNEY, Illustrated by ALISON JERAM

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Brand new hardcover book with beautiful colour pictures. 32 pages, published 2004

Every night, while tucking in their three cubs, Mummy and Daddy Bear tell them they're the most wonderful baby bears in the whole wide world.

But one day the three little bears start to wonder: How do Mummy and Daddy know this is true?

And even more worrisome to each sibling: What if my parents like my brother or sister better than me?

One night three baby bears asked their Daddy Bear, "Which one of us do you like the most? Who is your favorite? We can't all be the best."

From the team who brought us the beloved Big and Little Nutbrown Hare comes a tale that answers a timeless question with the ultimate reassurance - and offers the perfect way for parents to remind their own little cubs how very much each one is loved.

Mummy and Daddy Bear convince three worried cubs that there's plenty of love to go around in this comforting new tale from the incomparable team of Sam McBratney and Anita Jeram, the creators of Guess How Much I Love You.

About the author:
Born in 1943 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Sam McBratney and his family were forced to evacuate their home near the city's shipyards after a heavy aerial bombardment by German planes. They subsequently settled in nearby Lisburn, where McBratney's father was a compositor at the local newspaper. After attending Friends' School Lisburn, McBratney enrolled at Trinity College, Dublin. Graduating with honors in both modern history and political science, he married, and started a family, earning his living as a primary and secondary school teacher. All the while, however, McBratney held on to his dream of becoming a writer, and published children's books as a part-time author for fifteen years. Finally, with the 1996 publication of Guess How Much I Love You his dream became a reality.

Sam has written over fifty books for young readers, has published in a variety of genres during his long writing career - everything from science fiction to radio plays. His highly acclaimed 1993 young-adult novel The Chieftan's Daughter, a fifth-century story of young love and tragedy, was praised by critics as among the most significant works of children's historical fiction published in Ireland. However, it was not until he penned a four-hundred-word story called Guess How Much I Love You that his writing became a career. The hardback edition of the book sold over a million copies worldwide in its translation into dozens of languages, securing a number-one spot on numerous bestseller lists for children's books.

About the illustrator:
Anita Jeram was born and brought up in Portsmouth. After school she had a variety of jobs including working in a crisp factory and as a kennel assistant. She did a foundation course in visual studies at Manchester Polytechnic, followed by a degree course in illustration. Her tutor, also an illustrator, took some of her work to Walker Books and her first book, Bill's Belly Button, was published a year after she graduated. Her second book, It Was Jake!, was included on the National Curriculum SAT reading list. Anita is best known for Guess How Much I Love You, which has rapidly become established around the world as a new picture-book classic. Over a million copies were printed in the first year of publication and it was one of the best-selling children's books in both Britain and America. Guess How Much I Love You was shortlisted for the 1994 Kurt Maschler Award and for the Illustrated Children's Books category of the 1994 Bristish Book Awards. Anita particularly enjoys drawing animals and has a menagerie of animals at home including cats, a dog, ducks, chickens and reptiles.

Anita is married to a paleontologist and has two sons, Joe and Dan, and a daughter, Kitty. She lives in Northern Ireland and hopes, eventually, to set up a wildlife sanctuary there.

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You're All My Favourites by Sam McBratney and Alison Jeram