(++++) GENTLY JOYFUL

Brambly Hedge Festive Coloring Book. By Jill Barklem. HarperCollins. $10.99.

     Rarely does a coloring book have a chance to appeal to children and adults alike: kids’ books tend to be simplistic and formulaic, while those for adults are usually very elaborate and packed with adult-style themes drawn from fields such as dark fantasy and science fiction. So the Brambly Hedge Festive Coloring Book is a rarity – but then, so are Jill Barklem’s eight Brambly Hedge books, which were officially aimed at children but which managed to entrance and enthrall adults as well from their first appearance (1980) through their last (1994). In fact, their enjoyability for young and old alike extends well beyond the original books, thanks to various collections, spinoffs, toys, and series continuations by well-meaning authors paying tribute to Barklem (1951-2017).

     The Brambly Hedge Festive Coloring Book is one such series extension, and it is quite a pleasant and unassuming one – indeed, “pleasant” and “unassuming” are perfect adjectives for Barklem’s milieu and are key to the ongoing charm and delights of her creations. The first four Brambly Hedge books followed Barklem’s community of mice living in a hedgerow in the British countryside through the four seasons – and established a world in which everything is tranquil, loving, caring and community-focused, without predators or any acts of deliberate unkindness of any sort. This setup could easily have become simplistic and treacly, but Barklem’s skill at handling minor instances of nature-focused difficulties, explorations and seasonal enjoyment was such that the pleasantries did not wear thin – and, indeed, offered adults a calmer and more-cooperative world than the real one.

     The Brambly Hedge Festive Coloring Book, with its mostly black-and-white cover decorated with splashes of color in the form of holly leaves and berries, specifically celebrates winter and its holidays, and although there is no overt verbal reference to Christmas, it is certainly present at the time of the Snow Ball in the Ice Hall – for example, in the form of a suitably decorated tree topped by a mouse angel. “Step into the enchanting world of the hedgerow,” say the words as the book opens, on pages displaying Barklem’s drawings of various characters – but it is not really necessary to know the individual mice or understand their family comings-and-goings to find the illustrations throughout the book thoroughly charming even before coloring them. There is no real attempt at storytelling here – the coloring book just shows a number of scenes from Barklem’s created world and invites anyone so inclined to turn those scenes into pastels, watercolors, crayon creations, or whatever may render them even prettier and give them an even stronger flavor of pleasurable unreality.

     The brief snippets of text throughout the book place the illustrations in context but are scarcely necessary for enjoyment of the pictures. One page, for example, features a central oval that shows Wilfred Toadflax poring over a book; along the upper and lower page margins are shelves of books of all kinds, in all sorts of bindings, along with a few jars of this and that. The relevant text about the “damp and chilly” weather and Wilfred “spending the day inside with the weavers” is scarcely necessary, although it does help explain the facing page, which shows the weaver mice at work on their craft. Similarly, a scene of horseplay (actually mouseplay) in which two mice take snow from just outside their cozy home and chase their sisters with it does not really require verbiage about how they “chased their sisters…with pawfuls of snow scooped from the windowsill.” The text is a pleasant adjunct to the pictures, but even someone who knows nothing about Brambly Hedge and its resident mice can thoroughly enjoy the illustrations without reading anything.

     The to-be-colored pages provide a wide variety of scenes and a wide variety of opportunities to bring them to multicolored life. One page is packed with the details of quotidian hominess: foods and serving dishes and candles and bottles and baskets and everything that makes a small Brambly Hedge house a home. Another simply shows Clover Toadflax using a toasting fork to toast bread at a fireplace wherein is a toasty-looking fire. One page, whose text is about a key, shows that key no fewer than 33 times – it is an old-fashioned skeleton-type key with intricate workings. A two-page spread of mice dancing with delight as “Basil struck up a jolly tune on his violin” shows Basil doing just that – with a crowd of dozens of mice, dressed in winter finery, twirling and whirling about the room. The Brambly Hedge Festive Coloring Book has sufficiently complex pages to intrigue adults who are inclined to put a touch of their own on some tales that have justifiably become classics. But the underlying simplicity of the narrative material, and the pleasantries that peek through every one of Barklem’s illustrations, make the book quite apt even for very young colorists – indeed, it is noted as being “suitable for ages 3+,” which seems about right. In the spirit of all sorts of winter holidays, it offers a chance for adults and children alike to point to this-and-that especially pleasurable detail of the world of Brambly Hedge, with everyone finding his or her own way to add some color to a milieu that always sparkles, even as it glows from within.