Uttley lovely

We visited Granny this weekend at her new house in Suffolk, and came across a wonderful secondhand bookshop, in an old Methodist chapel in Westleton >http://www.chapelbooks.com/shop/chapel/index.html. The proprietor, resplendant in hat and pyjama bottoms, offered us tea and coffee as we browsed through higgledy piggledy shelves of treasures, stumbling across the occasional sculptures and eccentric objets.

I headed straight for the children's books, and had to restrain myself from pouncing on Louisa M Alcott. Definitely too soon to expect little a to sit through Little Women. But what an instant hit from memory lane to find a Little Grey Rabbit book, with its distinctive title type and layout, cover design, the line-drawn endpapers, and of course Margaret Tempest's beautiful illustrations.

We couldn't wait. We started reading in the car on the way to the beach. Fuzzypeg was an instant hit with little a. And if being in the bright sunshine of the beautiful countryside hadn't already made me want to run away from the big smoke, Little Grey Rabbit's adventures learning how to make lace had me yearning for a little green-doored cottage of my own. There is something so irresistible about hedgerow creatures dressed in Cath Kidston-esque outfits wishing on the moon.

It sounds twee, and I suppose if you were to be critical, then yes it is. But it's also surprisingly witty (Squirrel and Hare are the comic foil to Little Grey Rabbit's sensible country housewife) and gritty ('Let's cook him for dinner'). And I love this quote from the introduction: 'The country ways of Grey Rabbit were the country ways known to the author'.



Seems poor old little grey rabbit is out of print - how can this be? She is every bit as good as Beatrix Potter ...