Welcome to
The Prairie
Up where the maple and birch forests meet the rolling hills of rural Quebec, past the creek and the beaver ponds, that is where Billy roams. Explore the land, meet the herd, and discover the stories that grow in the green.
Roam InThe Prairie
A wide green world of rolling Quebec hills, maple and birch forests, and meadows at the forest's edge, where every creature depends on the water that flows through it.
A Land Held Together by Water
Billy's land is not one place, it is a whole watershed at once. It is the sunlit meadow at the forest's edge where the herd grazes and Billy practices his charge just because he can. It is the creek that winds down from the hills, carrying rain and snowmelt and news from one end of the valley to the other.
It is the boreal forest of maple and birch, where the light falls soft and green and the whole world smells of leaves and cold water. And it is the beaver ponds, built by the quiet engineers who, without ever meaning to, keep every meadow, every creek, and every creature downstream alive.
Take the water away, and the whole land begins to fade. Which is exactly what happens, one dry morning, in Billy's very first adventure.
Meet the HerdThe Herd
A young bison, his wise grandfather, and the sharpest ears in the valley. Meet the friends who call the land home.
The Young Bison of the Meadow
Billy is a young plains bison, all shaggy brown and bottomless curiosity, absolutely certain that the next hill will hold something worth seeing, even when it holds only more hill. He is stronger than he realises and gentler than he lets on, and he would rather help a stranger than win a race.
He grew up in the meadow at the forest's edge, learning to read the weather and the water long before he could read anything else. When the land needs something, Billy is already lowering his head and getting to work, usually before anyone has finished explaining the problem.
Billy's Grandfather, and the Reader of the Land
Grand-Papa Bull is old, broad, and slow to worry, with a grey muzzle and a memory that stretches back through more dry summers and hard winters than anyone else in the valley. He is the one the herd turns to when something is wrong with the land, because he understands how it all fits together.
He can explain a whole watershed, how rain becomes creek becomes meadow becomes life, in words a young bison can actually follow, without ever making it feel like a lesson. Where Billy asks "what's over the hill?", Grand-Papa asks "where does the water go?", and then helps Billy find out.
The Sharpest Ears in the Valley
Marie is Billy's friend and the first to notice when something in the land has gone quiet. She hears the creek before she sees it, feels a change in the wind before it arrives, and points with one ear at the exact spot where the trouble began.
She is quick where Billy is strong, and observant where he is eager, and the two of them together miss almost nothing. When the meadow's water goes missing, it is Marie who says it first, plainly, and then leads the way toward finding it.
The Stories
Every adventure on the land begins with a single question: where did the water go? Here is the first, and the first one you can hold in your hands.
Billy Bisson and the Missing Meadow
One dry morning, the meadow wakes up crunchy and brown, and the creek that feeds it has gone silent. Water is how the whole land stays alive, carrying rain from the hills to every root and every animal, and without it, the meadow will slowly fade. So Billy, Marie, and Grand-Papa Bull set off up the valley to find where the water went.
Their search follows the watershed from the dry creek bed up into the boreal forest, and leads them to the quiet engineers who hold the whole land together: the beavers. It is Billy's first adventure, and the first one you can hold in your hands.
A Popphin Learning picture book · ages 4–7 · set in Atkinson Hyperlegible so every kind of reader can roam in.
More Adventures on the Land
Billy's valley has more to give, more hills to cross, more of the land to understand. New Billy Bisson adventures are always in the works.
Watch this space, and roam in when the next one arrives.