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Gentle books for little ones and golden years

Colouring books, bedtime stories, handwriting help, puzzles and gentle exercise. Every book made with care: big friendly pages and zero stress.

Step insideColour a page
Say hello to the books on the pavement
Little ones

Colouring and bedtime stories

Bold, easy colouring pages with thick lines for small hands, and gentle stories for the last ten minutes of the day. Try colouring a real page below.

Colour a real page

Tap a colour, then tap the picture
Get the whole book
Bold and easy colouring
Bedtime stories
Curious kids

A thousand questions, one answer at a time

Real questions from our Big Books of Why, answered in plain words a child can repeat at the dinner table. Tap a card to flip it.

The Big Books of Why
Handwriting and learning

Help for hands that find writing hard

Dysgraphia workbooks for kids, teens and high school, left-handed tracing, pre-writing warm-ups and a planner for busy ADHD brains. Have a go at tracing a letter.

Trace the letter

Follow the dots
Handwriting, learning and focus
The colouring nook

Grown-up colouring, a cup of tea and a quiet hour

Detailed grayscale pages where the shading does the hard work, colour-by-number mysteries and seek-and-find puzzles. Move over the page to see what a little colour does.

Grayscale colouring page from Into the Wild Hover to add a little colour
Detailed grayscale colouring
Puzzles and activity books
What you'll need for grayscale pages

Grayscale pages want soft, see-through colour laid gently over the printed shading; ordinary pencils make them look flat. Five things that fix that, and a short guide to why.

Open tin of soft coloured pencils on a grayscale pumpkin pageMain setPrismacolor Premier, 48Soft, creamy, blends over the grey in one pass. Box of 72 coloured pencils, one drawing a fine line on a lace pageBudget setStaedtler 146C, 72Harder lead, crisp detail, fewer snapped tips. Colourless blender pencil smoothing orange shading on a pumpkinSecret weaponColorless blender, 12Melts strokes together so the page looks painted. Two-hole sharpener, sharpened pencil and shavings on a haunted house pageSmall essentialTwo-hole sharpenerA long point for edges, a blunt one for shading. Open 72-slot pencil case beside a witch colouring pageKeep them in order72-slot pencil caseA set you can see is a set you use.

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Golden years

Gentle exercise, big-print puzzles and happy memories

Chair Tai Chi and sciatica relief you can do sitting down, calm puzzles in large print, and "Born in" books full of the things you'll never forget.

Seated arm raiseFrom Chair Tai Chi for Seniors

The time machine

Pick the year you were born
Born in 1951 book coverBorn in 1951: 101 Things You Will Never Forget
Gentle exercise and care
Birthday and gift books
For grown-ups

The Mystery Room

Whodunit logic puzzles you solve with a pencil. Each case is a painted floor plan and one true statement from every suspect. Place everyone in the right square, and whoever shares a room with the body is the killer.

No guessing and nothing gory. Every case has exactly one answer, with hints and full solutions at the back.

Look inside the first book
Watch how to solve a case, step by step
Whodunit logic puzzles
For grown-ups

Gentle poems by Janice Kingsley

Short, honest poems for grief, heartbreak and love, with soft watercolour paintings throughout. Read one at the kettle, or a chapter on a long night.

Visit Janice's poetry page
Where You Are Now cover Still Learning to Leave cover You Still Give Me Butterflies cover
This season

The Halloween Shelf is open

Spooky, never scary: colouring, hidden pictures, colour-by-number mysteries and big-print word searches, with ghosts, a singing vampire and a very lonely Frankenstein.

Enter the Halloween Shelf
The Christmas Shelf is open too Visit the Christmas Shelf