The
Brambly Hedge Jigsaw Book. By Jill
Barklem. HarperCollins. $22.99.
Charm has no expiration date – or shouldn’t have one. The Brambly Hedge books date back to 1980
and stand as a wonderful memorial to Jill Barklem (1951-2017), who originated
them as a series of four seasonal volumes and subsequently produced four
additional ones. These are nothing but sweet books about a thoughtful community
of mice living in tranquility in the English countryside. Yet that “nothing
but” conceals so much delight! The books seem frozen in time, their treatment
of small adventures, small conflicts, and the importance of working together
for common goals seeming at once hopelessly old-fashioned and an anodyne for all
the trouble and turmoil to which children – always their intended audience –
are ever more frequently subject as time goes on.
These are books totally lacking in bad characters: nobody is unkind, and
even though these are mice, nothing preys on them. Barklem simply and lovingly
explores the families of Brambly Hedge, building the stories around picnics, gatherings
(birthdays, weddings, “traditional midwinter celebrations”), and small journeys
hither and yon. The illustrations are every bit as sweet and lovely as the
stories, prettily colored and often surprisingly intricate. It is impossible to
consider them realistic, but they are the sorts of pictures that can easily make
young readers – and, if they are being truthful, adults as well – wish that
things could be as lovely and loving as they are in Barklem’s mouse world.
The Brambly Hedge Jigsaw Book
is a new and special way to visit or revisit that world. A well-made, sturdy 8½-by-11-inch
board book, it contains six jigsaw puzzles, each consisting of 12 pieces, each
showing one of Barklem’s original Brambly Hedge scenes. On the pages facing the
puzzles are excerpts from the text of the books, relating directly to the
scenes pictured and also serving as an introduction to the settings and characters
that Barklem created – or, for those who already know and love these stories, a
revisiting of a fondly remembered place that is both magical and mundane, which
is to say that it makes the mundane magical.
The focus here is, of course, on the illustrations and the simple jigsaw
puzzles created from them; but the text’s resonance is pervasive. The especially
well-known picture showing a cross-section of a tree inhabited by the mice,
with all rooms neatly designed and arranged just so, introduces the “dense and
tangled hedgerow that borders the field on the other side of the stream.” The
surprise picnic on Wilfred’s birthday shows “the stream where baskets and
cloths were put down on the mossy grass” and where the grown-up mice napped
while the children “played hide-and-seek in the primroses.” The sheer charm of
the wedding day of Miss Poppy Eyebright and Mr. Dusty Dogwood pervades the
prose as well as the picture. The voyage of the Periwinkle is sheer pleasure, as “the children raced along the
shore and hunted for treasure in the rock pools together until it was time to
go home.”
The pages with text also contain small scattered illustrations picturing elements of the events described in the words and shown at full-page size on the puzzle pages. Pictures of puzzle pieces adorn the text pages, too. As a result, the design of The Brambly Hedge Jigsaw Book thoughtfully merges writing and illustrations throughout, almost as if Jill Barklem had assembled this thoroughly delightful volume herself. It surely partakes tremendously – indeed, to the fullest – of her spirit, and of the kind and gentle world she created so enchantingly with words and pictures alike. It is a world that seems far more distant in time as troubles of all sorts mount in the 21st century. But it is worth remembering that 1980 was no “perfect” year and that the Brambly Hedge books were a corrective to everyday troubles even when they were first created. They look back much further than their year of origin – indeed, to a time that never really existed, with characters that could never really exist. And yet they remain capable – as books and, now, as the most pleasant of puzzles – of transporting children and sensitive adults to one of those utterly captivating fairy-tale realms that always retain their attractiveness and their charm.
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