The Little Grey Men Go Down the Bright Stream - Paperback

by B. B. (Author)

When climate change and human interference forces four gnomes to leave their beloved home, they embark on a long, thrilling adventure that takes them over land and sea in this thrilling sequel to the first Little Grey Men book.

Sneezewort, Baldmoney, Dodder, and Cloudberry are the last gnomes in Britain. Life along the Folly Brook, where the gnomes live companionably with the birds and beasts, is wild and wet, just the way they like it. But one spring day, waking up from a long winter sleep, the gnomes are confronted by an inescapable fact: Their brook is drying up and will soon be uninhabitable.

A sequel to B.B.'s award-winning The Little Grey Men, this novel is about the gnomes' perilous and daring search for a new home. Warwickshire and the rest of their beloved country have been despoiled by men, and the gnomes must find another place as wild and wet as their home once was.

Part fantasy, part ecological parable, The Little Grey Men Go Down the Bright Stream was first published in 1948 and remains as exciting, poignant, and far-seeing as ever.

Author Biography

B.B. was the pen name of D. J. Watkins-Pitchford (1905-1990), who was born and raised in Northamptonshire, England. He studied at the Royal College of Art and was the art teacher at Rugby School in Warwickshire for many years. He married in 1939 and had two children; and in 1974 his wife died of exposure to pesticides from a neighbor's garden. A painter, illustrator, and outdoorsman as well as a writer, B.B. wrote nearly sixty books for both children and adults and illustrated dozens more, all of which reflect his naturalist's knowledge of and passion for the countryside. For more than fifty years he wrote a biweekly column for The Shooting Times (his pseudonym came from the size of the lead shot he used to hunt geese). The Little Grey Men, which was awarded the Carnegie Medal in 1942, and its sequel, Down the Bright Stream, are two of his most well-known and best-loved books.