Bedtime stories about kindness.

It was raining hard, and the bus was full of damp people with dripping umbrellas. Hana and her mom had found the very best seat: the one by the heater, dry and warm. Hana snuggled into it and watched the rain on the window.

At the next stop, an old man climbed on. His coat was soaked, his hat was dripping, and he was carrying two heavy shopping bags. He looked along the bus. Every seat was taken, and the only empty ones were wet from people's umbrellas.

Hana looked at the old man. Then she looked at her warm, dry seat. She thought about it for a moment. Then she climbed onto her mom's lap. "You can sit here," she said. "It's dry."

The old man smiled a big, crinkly smile. "Thank you," he said, and he sat down with a happy sigh, and set his bags at his feet. One of them had oranges in it. At his stop, he gave Hana an orange. "For the kindest person on the bus," he said.

That night in bed, Hana could still smell the orange on her fingers. She thought about the old man, warm and dry on his way home. It made her feel warm inside too. She pulled her blanket up to her chin and listened to the rain, and soon she was asleep.

The wall at the end of Maple Street had always been gray and plain. So one Saturday, everybody on the street got together to paint a mural on it: a big, bright picture of the street itself, with all the houses and trees and the people who lived there.

Everyone brought something. Mr. Osei brought green paint for the trees. Mrs. Petrov brought yellow for the sun. Jamal and his little brother brought red for the doors. And Hana's mom brought a big pot of blue, for the sky.

They painted all day. But by late afternoon, the blue paint ran out, and half the sky was still bare gray wall. "Oh no," said Jamal. "We can't have half a sky."

Mrs. Petrov thought for a moment. Then she mixed a little of her white paint with the last drops of blue. Mr. Osei added a splash of his green. Jamal stirred in a tiny bit of red. The color turned into a soft evening purple, like the sky at dusk. They painted it across the gray, and the sky became a sunset, blue at one end and purple at the other.

"It's better than the sky we planned," said Mr. Osei. Everybody stood back and looked at their wall, glowing in the real evening light. Then they washed their brushes and went home. Jamal fell asleep that night with a little purple paint still on his thumb.

Hester the hare had a picnic bag she loved. It was made of soft green cloth with a pattern of little daisies, and her grandmother had sewn it for her. Every sunny day, she took it to the meadow, full of carrots and clover sandwiches.

But one afternoon, the bag caught on a bramble, and RRRIP, a long tear opened along the bottom. A carrot rolled out into the grass. Hester's ears drooped. "My grandmother's bag," she said quietly.

Her friend Toby the mole saw everything. Toby had small eyes, but very clever paws. He didn't say much. But when Hester went home, sad, he carefully picked up the torn bag and carried it back to his burrow.

In his burrow, by the light of a small candle, Toby found a needle and some green thread. Stitch by stitch, slowly and carefully, he sewed up the tear. Then, because he had some yellow thread left, he sewed one extra daisy over the mend, so it matched the others.

Very early the next morning, before Hester woke up, Toby left the bag on her doorstep, folded neatly. He didn't leave a note. Then he went home and fell asleep, tired and happy, while across the meadow, Hester opened her door and found her bag, mended, with one new daisy that hadn't been there before.