Allan Ahlberg

A lonely pencil timidly draws a boy, a dog, and other items but soon faces a problem as his creations begin demanding changes, and when he draws an eraser to make them happy, the real trouble begins.

As Mr. Gaskitt takes a series of jobs and Mrs. Gaskitt keeps winning prizes, their nine-year-old twins, Gus and Gloria, follow a substitute teacher who seems too good to be true.

All the Gaskitts have a bad day when the baby rolls away in a shopping cart, the twins' teacher acts peculiar, and a lost bird tries to hypnotize the cat.

An adventurous little monkey who escapes from the zoo and spends the day meeting new friends in the outside world begins to miss his mom when evening comes.

Bert receives a disastrous haircut, loses his dog, and discovers that there are many other Berts in the world.

The adventures of various nursery rhyme and fairy tale characters are retold in backward sequence with each tale interrelated to the other. Includes Goldilocks, Jack and the beanstalk, Jack and Jill, the frog prince, Cinderella, and the gingerbread man.

Grandma tells Michael, Hannah, and their baby brother the story of three children who shrink to such a small size that they decide to live in a snail's shell.

Mrs. Gaskitt the taxi driver, Mr. Gaskitt the heavily dressed man, and their twins, Gus and Gloria, foil a bank robbery.

Esmeralda the pig is jointly owned by kindly Mrs. Harbottle and her nasty ex-husband Mr. Harbottle who wants to turn Esmeralda into sausages.