The Little Grey Men

Praise

“My dad bought the beautifully illustrated book The Little Grey Men, by B.B. (ages 8 to 12), for me when I was 8 or 9. It’s about three gnomes searching for their long-lost brother. Aside from being a rattling good adventure story, it’s a wonderful sort of nature study, following gnomes through the seasons.” —Julie Andrews, Parents Magazine

“The plot, involving three gnomes who set off upstream in search of a fourth who went a-questing two years earlier, is thoroughly wrapped in rhapsodic descriptions of bird song and nodding wildflowers, bubbling waters, breezes and storms, grassy pastures, the pleasures of angling, and nature observed from ground level. . . . [F]ans of Wind in the Willows will feel right at home. . . . The story winds down to a happy twist at the end. Given patient listeners, this Carnegie Medal–winner makes a leisurely but finally engaging read-aloud.” —Kirkus
 
“Though it’s a little galling to discover that I am not the only person who thinks that 1941’s [Carnegie Medal] winner, The Little Grey Men by BB, is a terrifically moving elegy for an England now almost extinct, it is gladdening in the extreme to know that other people have also been beguiled by the beauty of a meticulously observed countryside inhabited by gnomes with a passion for pipe-smoking.” —Olivia Laing, “In Praise of the Carnegie Medal,” The Guardian
 
“The Little Grey Men established (Denys Watkins-Pitchford, A.K.A. ‘B.B.’) at the forefront of children’s literature.” —CILIP Carnegie & Kate Greenaway Children’s Book Awards

“A couple of years ago I found myself gazing at the cover of a book I’d loved as a child . . . I braced myself in case its magic had faded in the 40 years since it had been read to me at bedtime. . . I loved B.B.’s illustrations, the precise and detailed rendering of the natural history in the book, and most of all the feeling it gave me of a secret world to which I was being granted privileged access. I needn’t have worried. As I turned the pages I found myself enchanted all over again.” —Melissa Harrison, The Guardian