Sophie finds a four-leaf clover that isn’t exactly lucky in the seventh book of The Adventures of Sophie Mouse! Sophie Mouse is painting in Clio’s Clover patch on a beautiful spring day when she spots something unusual. It’s a clover…but it has four leaves! Four-leaf clovers are supposed to bring good luck, right? Sophie waits and waits for this good luck, but it seems like just the opposite is happening. She spills paint all over herself, she doesn’t have any fun daydreams, and she forgets about an adventure she was supposed to go on with Hattie! Will Sophie ever be able to break this Clover Curse? With easy-to-read language and illustrations on almost every page, the Adventures of Sophie Mouse chapter books are perfect for beginning readers. Poppy Green can talk to animals! Unfortunately, they never talk back to her. So she started writing in order to imagine what they might say and do when humans aren’t watching. Poppy lives on the edge of the woods in Connecticut, where her backyard is often a playground for all kinds of wildlife: birds, rabbits, squirrels, voles, skunks, deer, and the occasional wild turkey. Jennifer A. Bell is an illustrator whose work can be found in greeting cards, magazines, and more than forty children’s books. She studied fine art at the Columbus College of Art and Design and spent many years designing seasonal giftware and greeting cards before becoming a children’s book illustrator. She lives in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Clover Curse The Groundhog’s Rainbow Mrs. Wise closed the book she had just read out loud to the class. Sophie sighed. Wow! What a story! she thought. A groundhog had found a hidden stairway in a tree. He’d climbed it all the way to the top branch. But the stairway kept going. So the groundhog did too—into the clouds and over a rainbow! He found a magical world on the other side. Sophie loved the story and the way it was told. It didn’t feel like a fairy tale. It was written as if it had really happened! “All right class,” said Mrs. Wise. “Who can tell me what a legend is?” Lydie, Hattie Frog’s big sister, raised her hand. “It’s a story that animals believe in,” Lydie said. “But there’s no proof that it really happened.” Mrs. Wise nodded. “That’s a good way to put it,” she said. “Have any of you heard stories like this? Are there any legends of Silverlake Forest?” A few hands went up around the one-room schoolhouse. “The Tale of the Fox’s Tail!” said Zoe the bluebird. Sophie nodded. That one was about a fox whose tail would not stop growing. “The Myth of the Mousebug!” Ben the rabbit suggested. Sophie squeaked excitedly. She was fascinated by the tale of a mouse who turned into a bug! A ladybug swooped in through a classroom window. It flew around Sophie’s head. Then it landed on the windowsill. Sophie stared at the bug as her mind wandered. “Are you the mousebug?” she whispered playfully. The bug buzzed out the window and was gone. Sophie’s eyes fixed on a patch of blue sky outside. It had been raining for days. Now the sun was finally poking through. She could just make out a pale misty rainbow. The groundhog’s rainbow! Sophie thought, smiling to herself. Mrs. Wise dismissed the class for the day. “We’ll talk more about legends on Monday!” she called as everyone stood up.