Ted Hughes wrote a series of stories for children from the early 1960s through until 1995 about how the world, and the creatures in it, came into being. They are collected here in one volume for the first time.

These are richly told tales of sparkling intensity about animals finding their form, and God’s struggle to understand what he has created. Meet the Polar Bear whose obsession with her snowy white fur is so great that she can only live in a landscape surrounded by her own reflection; the Whale, growing in God’s garden beside the carrots; King Leo, who began life because God was hungry for his sausages; poor Parrot’s painful defeat in the marriage song contest at the wedding of Man and Woman; and Sparrow’s heroic battle against the bird-swallowing Black Hole.

There are stories here to suit children from four to fourteen, whether for reading aloud or alone.