Author | BB |
---|---|
Illustrator | Denys Watkins-Pitchford (the author) [1] |
Cover artist | Watkins-Pitchford |
Country | United Kingdom |
Series | The Little Grey Men [2] |
Genre | Children's fantasy novel |
Publisher | Eyre & Spottiswoode |
Publication date | 1942 |
Media type | Print (hardcover) |
Pages | 201 pp (first ed.) [1] |
OCLC | 752520061 |
LC Class | PZ8.W3 Li [1] |
Followed by | Down the Bright Stream |
The Little Grey Men: A story for the young in heart is a children's fantasy novel written by Denys Watkins-Pitchford under the pen name "BB" and illustrated by the author under his real name. [2] It was first published by Eyre & Spottiswoode in 1942 and it has been reissued several times. [3] Set in the English countryside, it features the adventures of four gnomes who may be the last of their race. At the same time it features the countryside during three seasons of the year.
Watkins-Pitchford won the 1942 Carnegie Medal recognising The Little Grey Men as the year's best children's book by a British subject. [4]
A sequel was published in 1948, Down the Bright Stream; later issued as The Little Grey Men Go Down the Bright Stream (Methuen, 1977). Jointly they may be called the Little Grey Men series. [2]
The original novel was adapted for television in 1975. [5]
The last four gnomes in Great Britain live beside Folly Brook in Warwickshire; they are named after the flowers Baldmoney, Sneezewort, Dodder and Cloudberry. After Cloudberry goes exploring one day and does not return, the others make the tremendous decision to build a boat, the Dragonfly, and set out to find him. This is the story of the gnomes' epic journey, set against the background of the English countryside, beginning in spring, continuing through summer, and concluding in autumn, when the first frosts are starting to arrive. [6]
In the first sequel (published 1948), the four gnomes are forced to leave their home after it is damaged by flooding. Using their clockwork boat the Jeanie Deans, and later a flying machine named Wonderbird, they travel to Ireland and colonise a ruined chapel surrounded by a loch. [7]
Years earlier, a community of gnomes in the Forest of Boland build a narrow gauge railway to transport their miners to the gold mines and cope with the growing yields of ore. Some wicked goblins steal the steam locomotive named the Boland Belle, overrun the town and enslave the population, but are eventually driven out of the forest by a friendly tribe of Cowzies. [8] The book's popularity among Generation X children in the UK meant that it was reprinted twice, during the early 1970s and mid 1980s. [9]
This novel has been described as the most distinguished fantasy of the war years, a fantasy which sought to capture the beauty and wonder of an English year, a timely and timeless book. Through the choice of gnomes for the protagonists, the author was able to get closer to nature and show more effectively the hazards wild creatures face. [10] The authenticity of the natural history satisfied the preference of the Carnegie committee for realism over fantasy, and the book won the award for the most outstanding children's book of 1942. [4] [11]
The novel was one of Syd Barrett's favourite books; an excerpt from it was read at his funeral. [12]
In 1975 The Little Grey Men was adapted into a 10-part animated series, called Baldmoney, Sneezewort, Dodder and Cloudberry, by Anglia Television in the U.K. [5]
A gnome is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, first introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors including those of modern fantasy literature. Typically small humanoids who live underground, gnome characteristics are reinterpreted to suit various storytellers and artists.
Watership Down is an adventure novel by English author Richard Adams, published by Rex Collings Ltd of London in 1972. Set in Hampshire in southern England, the story features a small group of rabbits. Although they live in their natural wild environment, with burrows, they are anthropomorphised, possessing their own culture, language, proverbs, poetry, and mythology. Evoking epic themes, the novel follows the rabbits as they escape the destruction of their warren and seek a place to establish a new home, encountering perils and temptations along the way.
Rubus chamaemorus is a species of flowering plant in the rose family Rosaceae, native to cool temperate regions, alpine and arctic tundra and boreal forest. This herbaceous perennial produces amber-colored edible fruit similar to the blackberry. English common names include cloudberry, nordic berry, bakeapple, knotberry and knoutberry, aqpik or low-bush salmonberry, and averin or evron.
Lamport is a village and civil parish in West Northamptonshire, England. The village is on the A508, about 8 miles (13 km) south of Market Harborough and 8 miles (13 km) north of Northampton. Nearby is Lamport Hall. At the time of the 2001 census, the parish's population was 207 people, including Hanging Houghton and increasing to 225 at the 2011 Census.
Green Knowe is a series of six children's novels written by Lucy M. Boston, illustrated by her son Peter Boston, and published from 1954 to 1976. It features a very old house, Green Knowe, based on Boston's home at the time, The Manor in Hemingford Grey, Huntingdonshire, England. In the novels she brings to life the people she imagines might have lived there.
Garth Montgomery Williams was an American artist who came to prominence in the American postwar era as an illustrator of children's books. Many of the books he illustrated have become classics of American children's literature.
In Stuart Little, Charlotte's Web, and in the Little House series of books of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Williams['s] drawings have become inseparable from how we think of those stories. In that respect ... Williams['s] work belongs in the same class as Sir John Tenniel's drawings for Alice in Wonderland, or Ernest Shepard's illustrations for Winnie the Pooh.
"Little Bunny Foo Foo" is a children's poem and song. The poem consists of four-line sung verses separated by some spoken words. The verses are sung to the tune of the French-Canadian children's song "Alouette" (1879), which is melodically similar to "Down by the Station" (1948) and the "Itsy Bitsy Spider". The person performing the song usually includes hand gestures, e.g. for "scooping" and "bopping".
Gnome Press was an American small-press publishing company primarily known for publishing many science fiction classics. Gnome was one of the most eminent of the fan publishers of SF, producing 86 titles in its lifespan — many considered classic works of SF and Fantasy today. Gnome was important in the transitional period between Genre SF as a magazine phenomenon and its arrival in mass-market book publishing, but proved too underfunded to make the leap from fan-based publishing to the professional level. The company existed for just over a decade, ultimately failing due to inability to compete with major publishers who also started to publish science fiction. In its heyday, Gnome published many of the major SF authors, and in some cases, as with Robert E. Howard's Conan series and Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, was responsible for the manner in which their stories were collected into book form.
Alison Uttley, néeAlice Jane Taylor, was an English writer of over 100 books. She is best known for a children's series about Little Grey Rabbit and Sam Pig. She is also remembered for a pioneering time slip novel for children, A Traveller in Time, about the imprisoned Mary, Queen of Scots.
Denys James Watkins-Pitchford MBE was a British naturalist, an illustrator, art teacher and a children's author under the pseudonym "BB". He won the 1942 Carnegie Medal for British children's books.
Gustaf Adolf Tenggren was a Swedish-American illustrator. He is known for his Arthur Rackham-influenced fairy-tale style and use of silhouetted figures with caricatured faces. Tenggren was a chief illustrator for The Walt Disney Company in the late 1930s, in what has been called the Golden Age of American animation, when animated feature films such as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Fantasia, Bambi and Pinocchio were produced.
Oisín McGann is an Irish writer and illustrator, who writes in a range of genres for children and teenagers, mainly science fiction and fantasy, and has illustrated many of his own short story books for younger readers. As of 5/10/22, his most recent book is about climate change
Brendon Chase is a children's novel by Denys Watkins-Pitchford, writing as 'BB'. It was published in 1944 but is set at an earlier date. The novel is about three boys living wild in an English forest. It was later made into a 13-part TV serial and shown on ITV from 31 December 1980 to 25 March 1981. The series was also shown in many other European countries and in the United States.
Peter Brown is a major character in the Oz novels of Ruth Plumly Thompson, who continued the series of Oz books after the death of their creator, L. Frank Baum. Thompson used Peter as the protagonist in three of her books: The Gnome King of Oz (1927), Jack Pumpkinhead of Oz (1929), and Pirates in Oz (1931).
Going Bovine is a 2009 surreal dark comedy novel by Libba Bray. It follows the experiences of high school junior Cameron Smith, who gets diagnosed with transmissible spongiform encephalopathy.
Little Grey Rabbit is the lead character in a classic, eponymous series of English children's books, written by Alison Uttley and illustrated by Margaret Tempest, except for the last five, illustrated by Katherine Wigglesworth. They appeared over a forty-year period up to the mid-1970s to great acclaim, and gave rise to a TV film series in 2000.
John Godfrey Bernard Worsley was a British artist and illustrator best known for his naval battle scenes and portraits of high-ranking officers and political figures. One of the very few active service artists of the Second World War, Worsley was the only person to render contemporary sea-warfare in situ, and the only official war artist captured by the Germans. Detained in the infamous prisoner-of-war camp Marlag O, Worsley documented prison life with supplies provided by the Red Cross, his expertise employed in the forging of identity papers, and an ingenious escape attempt requiring the construction of a mannequin named Albert R.N.
The Nac Mac Feegle are a fictional type of fairy folk that appear in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels Carpe Jugulum, The Wee Free Men, A Hat Full of Sky, Wintersmith, I Shall Wear Midnight, Snuff, and The Shepherd's Crown. At six inches tall, these fairy folk are seen as occasionally helpful thieves and pests.
In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, gnomes are one of the core races available for play as player characters. Some speculate that they are closely related to dwarves; however, gnomes are smaller and more tolerant of other races, nature, and of magic. Depending on the setting and subrace, they are often skilled with illusion magic or engineering. Gnomes are small humanoids, standing 3–3.5 feet (91–107 cm) tall.