Susanne Stemmer - Ilvie Little and the Fearless Sailors

And for all the other

little, smart girls,

who will conquer the world.

Stay strong and wise!

Title Page

Ilvie and Theo

The girl on the swing

A beautiful giant boat

The portrait of great-grandmother Grace

The new coat of paint for the Anastasia

Carlos and Sammy

The crew is complete

There will be three journeys …

Practicing and polishing

Final preparations

Mast and sheet break!

A new dress for the captain

Cumulonimbus Clouds

Ella

The Anemoi Islands

New acquaintances at sea

On the Tarantula II

Ilvie has an idea

They really exist!

Thank you, Supergirls and Superboys!

About Susanne Stemmer

This is the story of Ilvie Little, a fearless little elf, who one day decided to leave the lovely land of the elves, pass through the big elf gate, and explore the outside world. Just flying around in the land of the elves being happy would have been much too boring for Ilvie! She ­wanted to have adventures, meet new people, do new things—and see how people lived in the world outside.

Her best friend Theo—a little monkey—was extremely skeptical. He couldn’t understand notevenalittlebit why someone would want to leave the charming, lovely land of the elves just to have a few adventures.

Pooh! Adventures! That sounded like a lot of work. Theo’s favorite thing to do was to lie in the meadow with the sun shining on his belly and eat strawberry cupcakes. He was very comfortable with his life and didn’t like changes, notevenalittlebit. You could tell that just by looking at him, for by nature he looked a bit wary, and he usually didn’t make faces, regardless of how he was feeling. He found that was much less stressful than always ­having to show his feelings. Yes, Theo was a most unusual little monkey. For example, he hated climbing trees. Maybe that’s because he fell out of a tree once when he was a very young monkey. Since then, Theo was firmly convinced that climbing was very dangerous for him. Theo also thought that bananas tasted truly terrible. He simply couldn’t understand why the other young monkeys stuffed their mouths full of those terrible yellow things. Instead, Theo loved to eat strawberry cupcakes; he could eat those almost any time.

And one of these wonderful strawberry cupcakes was also the reason why Theo finally agreed to accompany Ilvie on her adventures. The little monkey had just gobbled down four or five strawberry cupcakes, so he stretched out even more comfortably in the meadow and began to nod off. That’s when Ilvie—for at least the one-thousand-seven-hundred-and-fiftieth time—said softly, “Come with me, Theo!” He was feeling so full and happy that he accidentally mumbled, “OK …” Suddenly, Theo had to plug his very sensitive ears, for Ilvie’s howl of pleasure was incredibly loud—louder than anything Theo had ever heard—and it could be heard right across the land of the elves.

On the day of Ilvie and Theo’s departure, all the elves came to bid them good-bye and wish them luck. Some of the elves cried a little bit because they would miss Ilvie and Theo so much, but the elves also admired Ilvie’s courage. She was leaving behind every­thing nice in the land of the elves just so she could see what was out there in the world.

Now she was exactly like a normal human child. Before leaving, she also had to give up her elf wings and all of her ­magic elven powers. Now, she was exactly like a normal human child.

Well, almost. She was allowed to keep one ability—the power to read people’s thoughts. Ilvie and Theo called this “twinkling.” In human ­language, it’s called “communicating telepathically,” but Ilvie and Theo thought that was much too boring and complicated a name for this miraculous kind of speaking without speaking. They thought “twinkling” was much better. Twinkling worked like this: when Ilvie wanted to tell Theo something, she just said it in her thoughts and Theo could understand it without Ilvie ­having to say it with her voice or even open her mouth. And, of course, it worked the other way around, too. When her little friend twinkled, Ilvie could understand him without Theo having to say anything out loud. That was very important for, as we know, he was a little monkey and little ­monkeys can’t speak like people. But Theo could understand human language. ­Although he couldn’t speak, like other little monkeys, Theo could make ­noises and these noises surprised Theo himself more than anyone else. If Theo had to sneeze, for example, it was the loudest sneeze that anyone had ever heard from a small monkey. Or when he was very startled, ­sometimes he said “Waaaaahhhhhhhhhh!” so very loudly and frightfully that it sounded as if a giant monkey had started to bellow. Or, if he had just nodded off briefly, sometimes a loud, grunting, droning snore came from his mouth and then he woke up again from sheer fright.

But aside from those surprise noises, Ilvie and Theo used their secret ­language, twinkling, and in the end, it was very practical!

Once upon a time, long, long ago, all people could twinkle. But today there are very few people who can still “speak” this beautiful old language; most of them have forgotten twinkling. That’s probably because the world outside of the land of the elves has become just a little too loud and too fast. In this story you will see which people still remember the beautiful, old secret language. And which animals, of course. Actually, nearly all animals can twinkle very well if they understand human language; they never forgot how to twinkle.

Pooh! We’ve really been walking for a long time and we’ve gone really far!’ twinkles Theo the little monkey. ‘When will we finally get where we’re going? It seems to me we’ve been walking on this cliff for hours and days and weeks. We haven’t met anyoneatall and my stomach is growling something terrible!’