The harvest has to come in before the weather turns, and every mouse at Brambly Hedge is working. Primrose means to help. Instead she daydreams her way across the cornfield and into the Chestnut Woods, and by the time she looks up the sun has gone, the wind is rising and it has started to rain.

It is a small fright, handled kindly, and it lands because Jill Barklem builds the world so solidly first. Her cross section drawings open the mouse houses like doll houses, and the autumn pages are full of blackberries, hips, haws and stacked preserves. Readers who had this book as children tend to recognize a single spread on sight.

Thirty two pages, hardcover. One of the four seasonal stories, and the one to start with in September. We carry Spring Story and the later The Secret Staircase on their own, all four seasons together in A Year in Brambly Hedge, and her Brambly Hedge drawings as line art in the Festive Coloring Book.