Wilfred wakes up early because it is his birthday. There are presents, and then there is the thing nobody has told him about: Mr Apple has arranged a celebration picnic and every mouse in Brambly Hedge is going. Wilfred has to help carry it. His hamper is heavy in a way that makes no sense for sandwiches, he lurches and bumps the whole way up the grassy track, and what is finally inside it is the best treat of the day.

The story is small on purpose. What made these books last is what is drawn around the edge of it: the milled flour, the stacked preserves, the staircases inside a tree trunk, the way Jill Barklem thought out how a mouse society would actually cater a picnic before she painted one. Readers go back for the pantries, and children go back because everyone in the hedge has a job and a house you can see into.

A hardback of thirty two pages, small enough for a child to hold open themselves. Spring is the first of the four seasons; the whole year is boxed in A Year in Brambly Hedge, and the same drawings come as line art in the Festive Coloring Book.