It is not every day that you are invited to an enchanted island. It is not everyone who would be brave enough to accept -- especially when you know there will be cannibals aplenty. But when Margaret receives the invitation mysteriously addressed "To the Lady of the Blue Beads", it is your chance to go too. Who are the cheeky Beady and Inky who penned the invitation? Where is their homeland, Coconut-Ice Island? And, most important of all, how do we get there?

When first published in 1908, Annie Rentoul's enchanting story and Ida Rentoul Outhwaite's inimitable illustrations made The Lady of the Blue Beads a great success. So much so that the artist prepared a set of colour illustrations and new black and white drawings for a later edition that was never produced. It is these illustrations that are presented here, published for the first time.

Here is a fresh invitation to adventure on Coconut-Ice Island which children everywhere will find excitingly irresistible.