The mice of Brambly Hedge forecast snow, and they are right. They wake to find their doors and windows behind deep drifts, and the first thing anyone says is not a complaint. It is "There is enough for a Snow Ball!" What follows is the whole book: the hedgerow digs an Ice Hall out of the drift, the kitchens work for days, and the little mice watch every preparation with their eyes getting wider.

Jill Barklem drew Brambly Hedge the way an architect draws a house. You see the Store Stump kitchen with its candles and hanging pans and the flour on the table, then the ice arches with the light coming through them, then the ball itself with Basil playing and the dancing under way. Children who cannot yet read a word will sit and hunt through those pages, which is the point of them.

This is the small hardback edition, about 6.9 by 5.7 in, made to be held by the child rather than by the adult. It is the winter volume of the four seasonal stories, so it stands next to Spring Story, Summer Story and Autumn Story on the same shelf, and it is the one that comes out in December.

The rest of the hedgerow is on the shelf here: Spring Story, Autumn Story and The Secret Staircase. All four seasons come boxed together in A Year in Brambly Hedge, which is the only way to get Summer Story from us, and there is a Brambly Hedge festive coloring book too.

Hardcover, 32 pages, written and illustrated by Jill Barklem. HarperCollins Children's Books, an imprint of HarperCollins, 2017. ISBN-13 9780008241186. Publisher age guidance: 4 to 6 years.