Sleepy Time Tales of Primrose Wood By Sheila Hodgetts
Sleepy Time Tales of Primrose Wood is one of the first books I can remember ever being read to me when I was knee high to a grasshopper Carefully preserved alongside one other precious literary relic from my past it was given to me as an adult by my mother who realised how precious this bit of ephemera might be. She was wiser than I For I a fully fledged adult and well past children s books looked at the two smiled to myself thought how impossibly old fashioned they were to use with the children I taught at the time and passed them on to a Worthy Cause Only years later did I come to regret such a hasty action. With the advent of the internet I began to try to track them down I knew one was a half size little green book about woodland animals Bedtime Woodland Tales maybe Sleepy Tales of the Woods Woodland Stories at Bedtime Have you any idea just how many books have been published with similar names to this And how difficult it is to track down one from the 1950 s Eventually I struck gold excitedly reporting to my very puzzled husband after midnight one evening that I had just bought Sleepy Time Tales of Primrose Wood from Oddly he did not seem to understand what a major success this was I had also discovered that there were three in the series and that the author Sheila Hodgetts had written and illustrated many other children s books including the Toby Twirl books Sleepy Time Tales of Primrose Wood arrived and the memories flooded back Of course I remembered this little band of woodland friends There was Mrs Bushytail the squirrel Harum and Scarum the otter twins Digger Mole curious Tilly Twitchit and her son the naughty disobedient young Flopsy rabbit There was the hedgehog Hatty and forgetful Mr Happy the hare Hoppity frog Wise Owl and Daisy the deer whom some thought was a giant monster There was Sammy Snail slow but sure Mr Heron Dozy Dormouse and vain little Binnie Bushytail Grumpy Mr Badger turned out to have a heart of gold but thieving Jimmy Jackdaw and Sneaky the stoat had to be taught a lesson And of course there was an enemy whom they all stayed well away from the farmer s dog As I read the first story about Pure and Simple the romantic swans I smiled as the ending came back to me All the woodland friends were worried Pure was on his own and Simple had disappeared After a few weeks Pure also sailed away up Bubble stream Everyone feared the worst and Mrs Bushytail started to cry But then Harum and Scarum the otter twins came scampering up telling all the others to go to the river and see Sure enough Pure and Simple were returning looking very proud of themselves and followed by three tiny cygnets They had wanted to give the others a surprise The story ends Nobody had guessed their secret That is unless you guessed it Did you And of course the child inside me who had demanded to be read these stories over and over again until my parents were probably sick of them still cried out Yes What the adult me now realises is how perfect these little tales are All have a little moral and also embedded in many of the stories are facts which even some adults may not know but are conveyed unobtrusively in a magical anthropomorphic animal story Children will probably know that the idea of animals talking is fanciful but they also learn from this story that swans mate for life and in Nature will go away upstream to nest Other stories show which animals can climb trees easily that a mole likes to burrow and live underground a whole host of known animal characteristics The twelve stories are indeed five minute bedtime stories as it says and many end with a chatty question by the author perfect to encourage a child s response and participation or short conversation between adult and child. I had read almost nine of them when I realised something didn t make sense Why did inquisitive Tillie sneeze so violently and then the story cut to vain Binnie perching precariously on the end of a branch over a stream Calamity There were thirty pages missing Back to the internet to track another copy down which turned out to be rather easier now I had all the details to hand A few days later I had another copy and was able to answer my questions Tillie had opened a pepper pot and Binnie was going further and further along the branch to show off the sunlight glinting on her tail Hoppity had wanted to teach her a lesson by making her fall into the stream Don t worry he does then rescue her My favourite story is Mr Happy s Mistake Mr Happy was given a commission by Digger Mole to invite someone for tea But Mr Happy the hare was most dreadfully forgetful Poor Mr Happy inadvertently invited an awful lot of people to tea They were all very pleased to be invited but the host Digger Mole was rather nonplussed But although there wasn t really enough to go round it all worked out very well in the end and they all had a lovely time It s enough to make any small child hug themselves with glee. So this 5 star rating is unabashedly nostalgic Of course this little book does not hold up to present day standards The paper is coarse Yes there is an illustration on every page but these are line drawings in black partially filled in with a flat area of one colour green red blue yellow or orange As a product nowadays it is certainly substandard But isn t it great when you realise that the stories you rated so highly in the past are actually every bit as good as you had thought they were Paperback
| Sleepy Time Tales of Primrose Wood By Sheila Hodgetts |
| English |
| 128 |
| Paperback |
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