Amelia and the three little foxes

This is my first attempt to write a children's book so I would very much appreciate some constructive criticism, I have my own thoughts on what's good and bad about the story and the style in which it's written, but I need help pointing these points, and others, out, otherwise I will never become a good writer.
   This is just the story plain and simple, the finished book would be illustrated, very illustrated, I'm seeing brightly drawn paintings and cute little characters. The words in bold are words which would have a glossary on the bottom of the page because I think it's important that children get to expand their vocabularies at an early age. I'm sure there are more things to point out but I'll leave that to you, and if anyone knows a great illustrator who'd be interested in this story I'd like to talk to them.

Amelia and the three little foxes

It’s Amelia’s birthday, today she is ten years old and she is about to have a birthday party, and it’s going to be a fancy dress party. Every year on her birthday since she turned six she has had the same party, where she and her friends get dressed up as their favourite storybook characters and they eat a lot of sweets and a lot of birthday cake and they play together all day long.

   When Amelia was four years old her mother read her a bedtime story about three very special little foxes; there was Sally who was the oldest and who was super smart and was always seen reading a book, and Henry who was super fast and could make 300 pancakes in three minutes and then there was George who was the youngest and smallest of the three, and just like every little boy George was very special because George could lift very heavy things, even big rocks that were ten times his size!

    The three little foxes lived in a tiny little foxhole under a very big tree. Their little house only had two tiny rooms; one bedroom where they all slept together (in a tiny little bed) and an even smaller kitchen where only one of them could cook at a time. Even with all its flaws the house was very special, because it had a very large backyard where they spent most of their time playing and frolicking, and even more lucky was that the house was placed deep in the heart of the forest where the trees grow really thick; with narrow branches and big leafs so every time it rained the three little foxes’ house never got wet and they could be out in their big backyard, with the big garden, all day just watching the rain pour all around them, so they played outside, they ate outside  and they even slept outside, but only when it was warm enough. George slept in a swing bed that he had tied up between two branches, Sally slept in a tree house that she had turned into a laboratory, and Henry would sleep next to the scarecrow that he built out of straws and old clothes. The three little foxes only slept inside when it was really, really cold, and then they huddled up together really tight and kept warm under a great big blanket.

   Every night, for several years, Amelia’s mother read one or two stories about the three little foxes that lived under the great big tree, and one of the stories that Amelia loved the most was the time when George saved a family of hedgehogs. It was a dark and stormy night and the three little foxes were huddled up in their bed under the big blanket listening to the storm outside, Henry and George got a bit scared by the howling wind so Sally stayed up all night making up stories for them so they would forget about the storm. On the morning after their backyard was covered by twigs and leaves and branches and a great many trees had fallen in the forest. Unfortunately one really big one had fallen down in front of a family of hedgehogs’ house, and it was now blocking their door; so they were trapped inside their own house! Luckily the big brown bear Mr. Crowley, who is the caretaker of the forest, was out walking and checking on all the damage the storm had caused. As soon as Mr. Crowley saw the fallen tree in front of the hedgehogs’ door he tried to push it out of the way, but no matter how much he pushed and pushed he could not move the tree, not even an inch! So after the third try he decided to go over to the three little foxes’ house and he told George what had happened and as soon as George heard about it he ran over to the hedgehogs’ house as fast as he could, and just as easy as one, two, three George had lifted the tree and set the hedgehogs free! The fallen tree was chopped up and used as firewood, and it was divided equally between the three little foxes, the hedgehogs and the great Mr. Crowley.

   For her birthday this year Amelia got dressed up as Sally, the very clever little fox that was always seen reading a book or writing some new ideas in the pad that she always carried with her. Sally was indeed a very clever little fox; she spent a lot of time in the tree house-laboratory inventing new and fabulous things. She made a pair of shoes for Henry that never wears out after he had worn out three pairs in just one day! She also created a new kind of paint, and crayons, which never dry out and lasts forever, so now Henry and George spend most days drawing and painting everywhere, especially on the walls and the floor and on each other! So therefore Sally decided to invent a soap that cleans everything really easy, especially little boys. Not every idea or invention turns out as good though, in fact only a few out of every 100 ideas she has ends up being a success, but that does not discourage her and she sees every failed project as something good, as something she learned from and something she then can avoid the next time, like the time when she was working on an electric tail warmer. It was a particularly cold day and she accidentally set fire to George’s tail! It got a little hotter than George had wanted it, but she learned from her mistake, and George learned that the kitchen sink is a good place to extinguish a fire on your tail!

   The birthday party has now started and Amelia and her friends are running around playing many different games at once, there are charades and hide-and-go-seek and follow-the-leader and Simon says and there are several treasure hunts going on, some of the kids are simply trying to see who can run the fastest, just like Henry the super fast little fox. Now Henry was more than just fast on his feet, he loved working in his garden and he loved to cook and bake and do laundry and many other domestic things. Watching Henry work in his garden is something very special; Henry has very keen eyes you see, and he can spot a bit of weed from far, far away and before you can even see him move he’s ripped up the nasty weed and thrown it on the compost, and every autumn when all his vegetables are ready for the harvest he puts a big, big basket by the door to the house and he runs out as fast as he can and picks up all the veggies and throws them over his shoulder and into the basket. But you have to be careful when Henry does the harvest because he’s so fast that the only thing you can see are the veggies coming down from the sky like rain drops, very big and very heavy rain drops.

   This year Amelia had decided that she wanted pancakes for her birthday, lots and lots of golden-brown pancakes, just like the three little foxes had for one of their parties. When the three little foxes had their pancake party they had invited everyone they knew in the forest, so it was going to be a massive party with hundreds of animals, so they had to make hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pancakes. Luckily they had Henry, and with Amelia’s latest invention; a frying pan that cooks pancakes in nanoseconds, making the pancakes was not going to take long at all! All they needed were 300 eggs, 15 liters of flour, 50 liters of milk and a huge pile of butter. Sally made the plan that if Henry was in the kitchen and threw the pancakes out the window at a 45 degree angle they should land on the table outside forming a tower of pancakes, and all George had to do was to move the tower of pancakes before it got too high and make room for the next tower. It all seamed easy enough, and the first couple of towers formed nicely and very, very quickly However, the more pancakes Henry made the faster he seamed to go, and after just a minute or two the pancakes were flying out so fast that Geroge couldn’t catch them anymore, and as soon as they started flying out faster they just seamed to go everywhere! It really was quite a sight; there were pancakes everywhere; pancakes in big piles, pancakes in Henry’s garden, pancakes in George’s swing, pancakes on the chairs, and under the chairs, and all over the table! There were so many pancakes in front of the tree house that you could not see the door to Sally’s laboratory anymore, and in the middle of all these pancakes; there was George running around picking them up and throwing them on what he thought was a big pile of pancakes, but it wasn’t a pile of pancakes at all, it was Sally! She had started the pile, but then she got hit with a couple of really fast flying ones and fell into it, and that was when George started throwing more on top of her.

   Once Henry had used up all the batter he ran outside to find the entire backyard covered in pancakes, and George was running around a big pile, but Sally seamed to have disappeared and the tree with her laboratory looked golden brown from all the pancakes. Henry thought it looked really beautiful, and delicious of course. There were pancakes on every branch, just like Christmas ornaments, the pancakes glowed in the sun so the tree really looked golden!  By the time George and Henry finally found Sally under all the pancakes the first guests had already arrived so there was no time to clean up the backyard, instead they started playing “find the pancake” which was easy at first but as soon as they had eaten all the ones on the ground they had to get them down from the tree! And we can’t be sure but there are probably still a few pancakes left up that tree!

    The story of the three little foxes and the pancake tree was always Amelia’s favorite, ever since she heard it for the first time, and she has dreamed of that pancake tree more times than she could remember, and sometimes she would wake up still smelling the delicious sent of pancakes, and that is why she always want to have pancakes on her birthday, and this birthday is no different than the others so Amelia’s mother has made enough pancakes to feed all the guests at the party, and since she is not as quick as Henry, it took her all morning and she has still not finished! So Amelia and her friends are eating the pancakes as they are being made, and they are having ice cream and maple syrup and strawberries and sugar and lemon and jam and everything else they could have wanted with their pancakes!

   Some of Amelia’s friends finish their pancakes early, so they hurry down to the playground in the middle of the block of flats where Amelia lives. Her kitchen window faces the playground and she can hear her friends playing down there, she walks over to the window and she can see even more kids playing down there now, and when they see Amelia they want her to come down and play, and just as she is about to run down to the playground she sees the stacks of pancakes that her mother made and that her friends never finished, and that’s when she got the idea of dropping the pancakes out the window to feed the kids on the playground! She has to drop them one by one so that the kids can catch them before they hit the ground, but it is a lot harder to drop a pancake from a three-story building, and manage to get someone to catch it, than you think! Some of them land in the sandbox, and some on the swings, and some are caught by the tree just under her window; so only about half the pancakes actually ends up in someone’s hand. As soon as Amelia runs out of pancakes she hurries down the stairs in her Sally costume, and as she run out on the playground she is greeted by kids eating pancakes. But what really catches her eyes is the tree with all the pancakes in it! There are pancakes hanging on the branches and they are hanging from twigs, and as the sun shines through the leaves it makes the pancakes glow in golden brown she finally sees it! It’s the pancake tree from her dreams, it’s the tree from the story with the three little foxes, and it is real! And it is just as beautiful as Henry had said it was! And that is the end of the story of Amelia and the three little foxes, and how she found her pancake tree.