Sophie Blackall

A farmhouse provides the setting for a dozen children to live and grow, and when they leave, another family arrives to fill the house with love again.

Everyone in second grade seems set on breaking a world record and friends Ivy and Bean are no exception, deciding to become the youngest people ever to discover a dinosaur skeleton.

Ivy and Bean try to make money by writing a newspaper about Pancake Court but the neighbors are not pleased to read about themselves.

Bean's older sister, Nancy, is going to Girl Power 4-Ever Camp, where she will do Crafts and Music and First Aid and other secret things that Bean will never know about because girls have to be eleven to go to Girl Power 4-Ever Camp. Bean doesn't care. She doesn't want to go to camp. She wouldn't go even if they begged her. So ha. So ha ha. So-wait a second! Bean and Ivy can make their own camp, their own better camp: Camp Flaming Arrow, where counselors...

After watching a movie about a detective on the television, Bean decides to set up shop as a private investigator--and she and Ivy start looking for mysteries to solve.

When seven-year-old Bean plays a mean trick on her sister, she finds unexpected support for her antics from Ivy, the new neighbor, who is less boring than Bean first suspected.