The autumn of 1933 is the most beautiful Edie Mather can remember. But in the fields and villages around her beloved Wych Farm the Great War still casts a shadow over a community impoverished by economic depression, and threatened by change. Change, too, is coming to Edie, who at fourteen must soon face the unsettling pressures of adulthood. Constance FitzAllen arrives from London to document fading rural traditions and beliefs, urging all who will listen to resist progress and return to the old ways — but some wonder whether there might be more to the glamorous older woman than meets the eye. As harvest approaches and the future of Wych Farm itself grows uncertain, Edie must somehow find a way to trust her instincts and save herself from disaster.

A Tree Song – The Kipling Society A Tree Song – The Kipling Society

Kipling entitled this poem A Tree Song, and it is to be found in the story Weland's Sword. Both the tale and the song set the mood and pattern for all the stories and poems which follow. The tune is intended to recall those of some of the old wassail and ritual songs. She isn’t overly critical of humans, rather they are portrayed as impressive inventors who are nonetheless blind to the destruction they cause. Harrison encourages ‘noticing’ children (and adults!) to act as best they can to protect the extraordinary, ordinary world around them, before it fades away completely.A faint tinge of Christianity has been given to them [the Midsummer fires] by naming Midsummer Day after St. John the Baptist, but we cannot doubt that the celebration dates from a time long before the beginning of our era.

Books by Melissa – Melissa Harrison

It's the kind of book that makes me want to go outside and try to notice and take care of every little thing surrounding me. All in all, I think the simple lessons and childlike nature of this book is not only relevant in our busy world, but are also extremely valuable lessons for all of humanity, if we only take the time to listen to them openly and non-judgementally. It’s not a hateful book, but honestly I think it’s pretty vapid. Some sequences are well-imagined, like a flying scene late on. But there’s a lot of fiction out there executing this kind of message and/or the idea of a world of tiny people to much better effect than this.

Verse 2, line 2] Aeneas: hero of Virgil’s Aeneid, leader of a group of fugitives after the fall of Troy, who becomes the ultimate founder of Rome. Three tiny, ancient beings – Moss, Burnet and Cumulus, once revered as Guardians and caretakers of the Wild World – wake from winter hibernation in their beloved ash tree home. But when it is destroyed, they set off on an adventure to find more of their kind, a journey which takes them first into the deep countryside and then the heart of a city. Helped along the way by birds and animals, the trio search for a way to survive and thrive in a precious yet disappearing world ... Most Mortals have no idea about the secret world of wild creatures - and of course the things you don't believe in are particularly hard to see." Now before the hate mail – or at least comments – start flowing in, let me be clear about something. Modern isn’t necessarily bad. Lots of concepts in neopaganism are modern and they still work just fine. Neopaganism gets some of its significant theology, ³ for example, from Robert Graves book The White Goddess which was published in 1948 and that doesn’t make those things any less valid. Generally these new concepts and ideas are built on older ones just with a new interpretation or understanding. So the idea of a triad of fairy trees may not be much more than a hundred years old, but it obviously is drawn from something else – perhaps the observation that these three trees often grow around holy wells, or perhaps the same thing that inspired Kipling’s poem.

Oak, Ash and Thorn - Mainly Norfolk A Tree Song / Oak, Ash and Thorn - Mainly Norfolk

The story follows the journey of three little people – Moss, Burnet and Cumulus, as they travel from the relative safety of their home in the garden of 52 Ash Row (Suburbia, Ash), to the dangers of The Hive (City, Thorn) via the springtime countryside (Oak). I will send you Geoffrey of Monmouth where is a lot of names-might prove useful-rum names, Sir, as ever was. He’s a author as has been down in the market but is looking up now, and though his style is pomptious, being wrote in Latin he didn’t understand, scholars is beginning to depend on him a good deal, as having got his stories out of old books, and not making them up himself as was for a long time supposed. However, I also will definitely be buying a physical copy to read to my children, and forsee it being a story we will revisit time and time again. Wow. Wow. Wow. What a beautiful, profound, and hilarious story! It made me so nostalgic of my childhood, which I often spent collecting frogspawn, birdwatching and climbing trees like a feral cat… It feels smug; not inviting readers in to wonder and understand and empathise with this new knowledge.While Harrison peppers in plenty of flora and fauna names her presentation of the worm’s-eye-view natural world never feels more than superficially informed. She never conjures a sense of deep knowledge or immersion. We’re told to care about the natural world - or rather, chided for not doing so - but the book doesn’t do much to convince of its wonder and value. I not only loved this book, I believed every word of it and as I water my seed paper I shall look at my garden, and the promise of the worlds within it, with renewed hope. Maybe, just maybe, it’s not too late.