By Ash, Oak and Thorn

Melissa Harrison's By Ash, Oak and Thorn is a gentle nature adventure for 11 year olds about three tiny, ancient people who lose their home in a storm.

What happens

Moss, Burnet and Cumulus are Hidden Folk. They're about as tall as your hand is long, and for two hundred years they've lived inside the old ash tree at the bottom of a garden on Ash Row. Every spring, the first blackbird song wakes them up.

This spring something is wrong. Cumulus, the oldest, has a hand you can see straight through. Then a storm splits the ash tree clean in two, and their cosy home is gone overnight.

So they pack what's left and set off to find their country cousins by the Folly Brook, hoping someone there will know why Cumulus is fading.

The three of them are the best thing about it. Moss is the youngest, house-proud and a bit of a worrier. Burnet is restless and carries a blade with STANLEY on it (who Stanley was is anyone's guess). Cumulus has one eye and remembers the dinosaurs, and never met a triceratops worth trusting.

It's also full of the real countryside. Blackbirds pass them along the street like lookouts. They camp in bat-skin tents in a hedge full of litter and bake woodlice in the embers. A tawny owl coughs up a pellet in the middle of a conversation. You'll come away knowing your crested dogstail from your Yorkshire fog!

There's a quiet sadness running through it too. The Hidden Folk once looked after meadows, woods and ponds, until people cut them down and built over them. Nobody lectures, but the book very clearly cares about what's being lost. Will your reader ever look at a scruffy hedge the same way again?

The early chapters are gentle and wandering rather than edge-of-your-seat. It'll suit a child who loves animals, being outdoors and noticing small things. A reader who wants a chase on every page might drift a little.

What to read next

If they love a band of small creatures driven out of their home, The Animals of Farthing Wood is a classic. Badger, Fox and Tawny Owl have watched the bulldozers fill in their pond, and every animal in the wood is called to an Assembly.