“Hamlet and the Tales of Sniggery Woods”
Hamlet “All pigs love food. Hamlet adored it. He lived with his family in a small house, just above Molefurrow Market, between Sniggery Woods and the river. Hamlet loved to cook delicious things for his friends, like compost soup, or boiled roses.”
Hamlet is a young pig who just loves digging in the soil and making mud pies. And then one day, he gets the chance to make real pies. He inherits the key to an old café in Molefurrow Market, and overnight his life becomes an adventure…. In the face of competition, Hamlet’s café becomes a cookery school, which keeps expanding, until even an old steam train gets involved, and becomes a mobile cookery school with a difference. His adventures along the way show us how the ordinary things in life can be full of magic and mystery.
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Guided by the wisdom and friendship of such characters as King Heron and his cousin Gloomy, Hamlet wins through. In this cycle of stories, Hamlet’s unbelievable adventures bring him back to the point where he started, having been a gardener, cook, archaeologist, detective and train driver along the way.
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King Heron“Hamlet, I have an
idea,” he said. “There are so many delicious things in the hedgerows that no one
knows how to cook. You ought to start a cookery school.”
King Heron lives on the edge of Sniggery Woods, in a tiny palace that sits in a
moatful of fish. The hallway is full of mosaics and fossils, and lights made of
crystals dug from the earth. Here he would sit, in his Thinking Nest, gathering
his thoughts and thinking of answers.
Sometimes he would go out onto the roof and look through his ancient telescope,
and see things in the skies that nobody else in the Woods had ever seen; things
that happened thousands of years ago. |
| Anyone who was looking for an answer could visit King Heron in the
sure knowledge that he would find them one. |
Gloomy“In the deep, dark night, one little window glowed
warmly as if a comfortable and kindly old house kept watch over the creatures
that played in its shadows.
The house was Gloomy’s and was so old that only cobwebs and cuckoo spit held it
together. A great oak tree had grown up inside the house, from a seed dropped on
the living room floor.”
Gloomy is Hamlet’s wild boar cousin, a good witch by profession, and one of
Hamlet’s best friends. She stands side by side with him through many a scrape.
Gloomy has two little stripey piglets of her own, called Ashkin and Budlet. |
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WilfWilf the Weasel was cleaning in the attic when he
suddenly shouted, “Look, everyone!” He had pulled up a loose floorboard, and
underneath it were lots of tins and packets of food!
Wilf is the messenger of the stories, carrying news on his quick little feet.
Always on the move, always snuffling out the truth, (and sometimes finding it
when least expected) he occasionally creates more problems than he solves. Wilf
is loveable, warm, friendly and loyal. |
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“Hamlet and the Tales of Sniggery Woods” is due to be published by Henry Holt, New York, in Spring 2009. A second collection of the illustrated tales of Sniggery Woods will follow.
Click here
for a gallery of Hamlet illustrations. |
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