Cheerful

This is the story of a little city mouse named Cheerful. He lives in a church with his parents, his brother, Solemnity and his sisters, Faith and Hope. They spend their days frolicking in the rainbow shadows cast by the stained glass windows and dining on crumbs left after wedding feasts. Solemnity, Faith, and Hope are happy to be city mice, but Cheerful's favourite spot has always been the greenest patches of light under the windows. He dreams of the country, and one day he bids his parents farewell and sets off on an adventure.
Palmer Brown's intricate filigreed drawings turn this sweet, simple story into an instrument of enchantment as glorious as a rose window, and as intimate as the sugar-spun Easter-egg that conveys Cheerful to his pastoral home.

PALMER BROWN (1920-2012) was born in Chicago and attended Swarthmore and the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author and illustrator of five books for children, including Beyond the Pawpaw Trees and its sequel, The Silver Nutmeg; Cheerful; and Hickory. About Beyond the Pawpaw Trees, his first published book, Brown said: “If it has any moral at all, it is hoped that it will always be a deep secret between the author and those of his readers who still know that believing is seeing.”