The hero
Ivy Jo
Brave, funny, and talks like a real kid — not a tiny adult in a greeting card. Blue-eyed, blossom-antlered, and fluent in a sock language she's still learning to read herself.
The Final Editions • Middle Grade • Ages 9–12
Where the
Virtues Bloom
A ten-book middle-grade adventure about one brave Kentucky girl, a forest that is fading, and socks that speak — now in its final editions: ten new titles, final cover art, Bloomlight borders and big storybook first letters on every chapter, and an arc that was ten books in the making.
All ten final editions are finished — written, illustrated, and checked page by page — and they're coming soon. Prices and the on-sale date will be announced here and by email first.
📖 Ages 9–12 • Middle Grade🌿 10 virtues • 10 books • One complete arc✦ Final Editions — Coming Soon📘 Follow us on Facebook ↗
🧦
The sock language: Ivy's mismatched socks change color when her heart learns something true — and the back of every book teaches one more piece of the code, until by Book 10 your child can read what the socks are saying. Start learning free with the Sock Decoder Card.
Ivy Jo with Sadie & Whindle. Antlers grow as virtues grow.
The Episode 1 cartoon trailer
Watch the trailer
The books, moving and talking: the trailer for Episode 1 — The Trip That Happened Twice, drawn from the cartoon series now in production. It starts, as everything in Ivy's world starts, with a sock emergency.
Prefer the tour of the whole forest? Watch the series trailer — all ten final covers and the words the series has been walking toward: someone is still here. Follow the cartoon as it's made on the Bramble & Bloom Press Facebook page, and join the email list for the on-sale date.
Now in production
The Series — the books, brought to moving life
Where the Virtues Bloom is becoming a narrated episode series: every book retold on screen in the books' own Bloomlight art, with the forest itself in motion.
Thirty episodes in all — three for each of the ten books — each one a self-contained chapter of the journey, 8–10 minutes long. A narrator carries the story while the paintings move: mist rolling through the trees, sock-light glowing, and Whindle — the ancient white fox guide — padding out of the fog exactly as the books draw him.
🎬 30 episodes📚 3 per book × 10 books⏱ 8–10 minutes each🎨 Bloomlight art, in motion
Episode 1 • In production • Coming Soon
Episode 1 — The Trip That Happened Twice
The series opens where the books do: Book 1, chapters 1–4 — Ivy's first steps into the forest, where she meets Sadie, Whindle, and the socks that speak. It's being made now — and its trailer is live at the top of this page.
Why new editions?
The series, finished the way it was meant to be read
The story outgrew its first printing. So Bramble & Bloom Press rebuilt all ten books as true middle-grade novels — deeper, funnier, more dangerous — and finished every one before announcing any of them.
✒️
Ten new titles, one long game
Each book now carries the title its story earned — from The Trip That Happened Twice to Someone Is Still Here. The arc underneath deepened too: a fading forest, a guide's old guilt, a daughter half-lost in the mist, and consequences that chain from book to book.
🌅
Bloomlight, all the way through
Every page painted in Bloomlight, the press's signature style: watercolor on warm ivory paper with the grain showing through, fine sepia ink only where things live, one virtue color burning as the light itself — now with trailing-ivy borders and big decorative first letters opening every chapter.
🔎
Two hidden games
A sock language your child decodes book by book, and a find-it creature hidden in every chapter — plus a second story told only in the pictures, about the guide's lost daughter. No other series on the shelf plays like this one.
Honest note on editions: The ten final editions below are complete but not yet on sale — they're marked Coming Soon, and this page will say so plainly until the day they're live. Nothing on this page will call the new editions available before they are.
The journey in order
Ten virtues. One forest. Watch Ivy grow.
Tap a virtue to see the book it became — its final title, what Ivy faces, and the color its light burns. Her antlers grow a little with each one; by Book 10, she won't be the same girl who first stepped into the trees.
The series • Final Editions • Ages 9–12
All ten books — the final editions
Every book in its finished form: final cover art, its real new title, thirteen chapters, and Bloomlight borders throughout. All ten are Coming Soon — finished, and arriving together, so a reader who falls for Book 1 never has to wait for Book 10.
Want the final editions the day they land? Join the email list — that's where the on-sale date is announced first.
Earlier printings: Book 1 first edition — Amazon · Book 2 first edition — Amazon
The games inside the story
Her socks are saying something
Two series-long games run underneath every adventure — one in the words, one in the pictures. Both reward a child who reads all ten books.
🧦
The Sock Language & the Growing Decoder
Ivy's socks are never just socks. Each virtue has its own color, and the socks glow, dim, and pattern as her heart learns — a language hiding in plain sight on every page.
The back of every book adds one page to the Sock Decoder: Book 1 teaches the colors, later books teach the patterns, and a message woven into the socks since the very first chapter finally decodes in Book 10 — three knocks of sock-light that turn out to mean someone is still here.
Book 1's pair — goldenrod & lavender — is the origin exception: Trust burns in two colors at once. Every other book lights the forest in its own single virtue color.
Glow… dim… glow. A knock in sock-light, repeated since Book 1. Book 10's decoder finally translates it.
🔎
The Find-It Game — a second story in the pictures
Every chapter of every final edition hides a find-it creature in the artwork — tucked into bark shadow, ivy curls, and firefly dust, exactly where Bloomlight hides its tiny motifs. Finding them all is its own adventure, and the Starter Kit below gives your family a first sheet to practice on.
And look closer still: the pictures carry a second, silent story — Aster, the guide's half-lost daughter, appears in mist and background long before the words ever name her. Rereading the early books after Book 10 is a different experience entirely.
Built for rereads: the words tell Ivy's story once. The socks and the pictures keep telling it.
Try the free Find-It sheet →Free from the Forest • Yours before launch day
Get the Sock Decoder Card + Find-It Starter Kit — free
Join the Bramble & Bloom email list and we'll send you the printable Forest Starter Kit — the best way to start the series before the final editions land, and the first place the on-sale date will be announced.
- 🧦
Sock Decoder Card — Book 1 level: what each sock color means, in the books' own art style. Print it, keep it in the book.
- 🔎
Find-It Sheet — one enchanted illustration with its hidden creature to find. Answer printed upside-down, as it should be.
- 🎨
Virtue-meter sock coloring page — for the fridge, the classroom wall, or the front of Book 1.
- ✉️
One email a month until launch — a Bloomlight page being painted, a decoder teaser, news from the lake house. Then launch week, and quiet again. Never more.
Who you'll meet
Meet the forest friends
Half of them are family. The other half are forest. In Ivy's world, there's not much difference — and two of them would like a word about the garden and the bird feeder.
The guide
Whindle
An ancient white fox made partly of mist, with blue eyes like deep water. He carries an old guilt he won't name, guides Ivy through every trial — and fades a little more with every book.
The loyal heart
Sadie
Ivy's golden-tan dog, who leapt into adventure like she owned a savings account. She'd follow Ivy anywhere — which is exactly what gets tested when Ivy flickers into spirit form.
The ones who started it all
Zeus & Luna
The family's real dogs, with opinions. Zeus — the big black dog who started it all, white blaze down his chest — has a résumé (just ask him). Luna, the smaller blue-grey dog with the white spot on her chest and under her chin, keeps him honest.
The comic spark
Thimble
A tiny wispling with big energy and a talent for face-planting into moss at the most serious moments. Every quest needs one. He's also very, very good at hiding — see the find-it game.
The wise one
Mira
Introduced in Book 3. She warns Ivy that hope is the tether back to balance, and teaches her what can't be rushed in Book 6.
The trial
Aster
Whindle's daughter — a silver-haired girl with lavender-violet eyes, half-trapped in the forest, a living picture of unfinished forgiveness. Watch for her in the pictures long before the words find her. She asks the hardest question in Book 4: “If he couldn't heal, how can you?”
The feeder queen
Sassafras
The lake-house hummingbird: ruby throat, white crown tuft, a tail like a ribbon — and a personality that reads birds twice her size the riot act. The feeder is hers. The yard is hers. She is simply allowing everyone else to visit.
The garden nemesis
Stumpy
A groundhog of the lake house with one life's work: the garden. Every raid is planned, every escape is smug, and his war with the garden's owner is the longest-running conflict in the series. Suspect remains at large. Suspect is always Stumpy.
The presence
Nanny Lynne
Nancy's mom, in the books the way she's in the family's lives — in the weather. Nanny Lynne never simply walks into a scene: she appears through the elements, her face formed of lake ripples, of cloud, of wind gathering leaves and lavender — always in her colors, silver, purple, and teal, with the faint glint of small oval teal glasses. A heart-shaped leaf. A voice in the wind. “Trust is a muscle, Jo. Gotta work it.”
Inside every book
Real novels. Short chapters. One chapter a night.
Thirteen chapters a book, Bloomlight art framed in trailing ivy, big decorative first letters, and an ending kids argue about at breakfast. These are full middle-grade novels — two-week bedtime journeys with substance, humor, and heart.
🧦
A language to decode
The sock decoder grows by one page in every book's back matter — colors, then patterns, then a hidden message that only Book 10 can read. Pattern-spotting disguised as magic.
🔎
A creature in every chapter
The find-it game hides a creature in every chapter's art, and a second story — Aster's — unfolds silently in the backgrounds across all ten books.
🦌
Antlers that grow
Book by book, Ivy's blossom antlers grow with her character — and Ivy herself grows up across the series. Growth you can see on the page, and root for.
✏️
Activity pages
Every book ends with things to draw, try, and talk about together — including the “Ivy's Magic So Far” keepsake tracker. Homeschool and classroom families especially love this part.
😂
Funny and tender
Thimble in the moss one minute, a heart-shaped leaf the next. The lesson always grows out of the adventure — it never lectures. Funny enough that adults keep reading past bedtime.
🌉
Trials & riddles
The Bridge of Absolutely Not. Cliffside riddles. Paths that crumble. Each virtue is earned by walking through something hard — and what one book breaks, a later book must mend.
Deep in the arc • Book 4 of the final editions
One Whole Second
By Book 4 — the Hope book — the adventure has teeth. Ivy is flickering between human and elk spirit, and she's scared of losing herself. Sadie can't follow her into pure spirit form, and that tests the bond she trusts most.
On a crumbling cliffside, Aster challenges her, and Ivy has to learn the book's hard, gentle truth: forgive the forest, Whindle, and herself — or risk being trapped like him.
Seeded for what's ahead: the Shadows learning new tricks, and — far down the road — baby Whisper, who will close the series in Book 10.
Final Edition • Coming Soon • 133 pages • Ages 9–12“Hope isn't about fixing everything. It's believing there's a way forward.”The heart of Book 4
“If he couldn't heal, how can you?”Aster, to Ivy
For parents, grandparents & teachers
Made for the one-chapter-a-night families
If you've ever hunted for a book with a real message that isn't preachy — one your child actually begs to continue — this series was written for your shelf.
- 🏠
Homeschool-friendlyCharacter and virtue woven into adventure, with a decoder page in every book that doubles as a sequencing and pattern-recognition exercise — plus activity pages that extend the lesson without a workbook.
- 🎁
A gift grandparents love to giveBeautiful, meaningful, and safe to hand to any family — all ten final editions arriving together, with the free Starter Kit to begin the adventure tonight.
- 🌙
Built for bedtimeThirteen short chapters with natural stopping points — and cliffhangers just gentle enough for “one more, please?”
- 💛
A complete arc to grow withTen virtues from Trust to Love, all ten final editions arriving together. A reader who starts at nine can finish the journey at twelve — growing up alongside Ivy.
- ✉️
Start free, tonightThe Sock Decoder Card + Find-It Starter Kit is free by email — print it and let your kids start reading socks before Book 1 even arrives.
About the press
Bramble & Bloom Press
Bramble & Bloom Press LLC is a small, independent children's publisher in Georgetown, Kentucky — named for the wild edges where hard things and beautiful things grow side by side. Just like its stories.
Its first series, Where the Virtues Bloom, was written by Kentucky mom and nurse Nancy Bennett for her daughter, Ivy Jo — and it grew the way the best stories do: out of a real family. The dogs are real. The hummingbird is real, and she really is like that. The groundhog's crimes are real. The love in it is real. The forest just gave it somewhere to bloom.
— Written for Ivy. Shared for every child growing a virtue.
The final editions at a glance
10
Final editions complete — Coming Soon, arriving together
Final editions complete — Coming Soon, arriving together
30
Episodes in the series — 3 per book, Episode 1 in production
Episodes in the series — 3 per book, Episode 1 in production
13
Chapters in every book
Chapters in every book
9–12
Reader ages • Middle Grade
Reader ages • Middle Grade
Final Middle-Grade Editions • Bloomlight art, borders & drop caps • Matte covers • Author Nancy Bennett
🌐 brambleandbloom.ink
✉️ Gather@brambleandbloom.ink
📘 Bramble and Bloom Press on Facebook — new pages, trailer clips, and launch news
The forest is waiting
Hear the on-sale date first — and start free tonight
Join the email list for the free Sock Decoder Card + Find-It Starter Kit, and you'll be the first to know the moment all ten final editions go on sale.
Home on the web: brambleandbloom.ink • ✉️ Gather@brambleandbloom.ink • 📘 Bramble and Bloom Press on Facebook