Michael Bond 
Paddington At Large 

"Even Paddington can’t come to much harm in half an hour, " said Mrs Brown optimistically. But he can manage a lot of other things in even less time – like hanging Mr Curry’s lawnmower from a tree-top, or coming up through the bandstand floor during the ’Surprise Symphony’.Then Paddington has a sticky time of it making toffee in Mrs Bird’s kitchen, and an even stickier time explaining what went wrong.And who else but Paddington could set Father Christmas’s beard on fire?