Enchanting tales (The Complete Brambley Hedge - Jill Barkin)

Member Name: Bryn Pearson

Product:	The Complete Brambley Hedge - Jill Barkin
Date:	10/10/01 (479 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: charming, wonderful illustrations, lovely tales

Disadvantages: none at all

If there's any children's fiction that should have been a classic and has somehow been overlooked, then Brambley Hedge is it. Everyone knows Pooh Bear and Peter Rabbit, but the mice in brambly hedge have been sadly under exposed. Not only are the tales charming, but the illustrations are lovely.

There are four books in the original set (yes, I have the original,)and each book deals with a season of the year. The unfolding story is influenced by the time of year, and filled with details about the weather, the state of the hedgerow and the like. In the summer tiny bottles are floated in the stream to keep them cool, in Autumn, the mice must carefully make their stores for the winter. The details are delightful. The stories themselves are simple - young mice getting lost, a wedding, that sort of thing. All very accessible to young readers, and very sweet.

I have mixed feelings about anthorpomorphism in literature - children certainly do respond to animals who seem a lot like them, who wear clothes and talk, but this often create a wholely unrealistic sense of how the world is. Most creatures are nothing like us, have different needs and wants. i've seen too many children be inadvertantly cruel to animals because they don't understand this. Brambley Hedge strikes a reasonable balance - the mice do live in their natural environment and are influenced by it. There are field mice who have a home in a little ball, just as fieldmice do, weaving the stalks together to make a nest. The mice wear clothes, they get married, have fires and that sort of thing - plenty of human stuff, but all rather old worldy. Issues like being eaten by weasils are present as well, which is good. The mice live in tunnels, they gather food from the hedgrow and in this they are much like mice. Its a good mix of the human and the realistic.

Best of all is the quality of illustrations. the art work in these books is wonderful, finely detailed and will make an
yone want to go and look closely at a hedgerow. Our hedgerows are an amazing habitat for all sorts of small creatures, and these books really convey that notion. Children reading them will be more inclined to care about the countryside, and may well want to look at some actual nature books, to learn more about the little mice they will have been enchanted by. ( a good thing indeed, as far as i am concerned.)

I have some very happy memories of reading these lovely tales as a child, and I would strongly recomend them to anyone whose children are of the quiet thoughtful persuasion. They are sitable for reading to younger children, and probably would go nicely before "The Wind in the Willows."

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