The Adventures of Hare and Snail

By Angela K James

Snail is adventurous, like any garden snail, he can be found halfway up a drainpipe or hiding under a rock, slowly moving through 'the garden' using the flowers, plants and insects as guides to which predators are around. There are many.

Hare is brave, mostly because he has few predators. Being aware of foxes, buzzards and hawks when he was younger, he knows about the larger mammals, the only thing he fears now are the men and their machines. But being able to run extremely fast from predators, he misses the insects, and only noticing the plants he needs to eat to survive.

So how do these two unlikely friends meet?

No garden is complete without a fairy or a gnome or something magical of some sort. In our garden we have a cross between the two, a Hedge Witch of sorts, but more a Hedge Brownie, using the garden to help, well, the garden and the gardener.

Have you ever found a plant in your garden that you didn't put there? The chances are a Hedge Brownie did, and probably to encourage a little creature to feed on it and in turn discourage the creature from feeding on something more useful to the gardener. The Hedge Brownie's knowledge of the natural world is extensive and very useful to not only the gardener but to every living thing there.

In this first book Hedge Brownie finds a lost and scared hare in the garden and decides to look after him until he finds his family and realises the hare could be useful. The Brownie's favourite meal is Wood Ear Fungi (chosen for the story because it's not poisonous and can't be mistaken for anything else) but he doesn't get along with the frog who owns the patch of land in which they're found. He could ask Fox or Badger, but the chances are they'd eat the frog and the fungi too, but a hare, on the other hand, would not. But Hare doesn't know the garden, he needs someone to be his guide, the snail, who can sit tightly on his head with the strength in his 'foot' and speak straight into Hare's ears.

Whilst on their adventures they learn about each others' worlds, the predators and the friends and the nature and wildlife that surrounds them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Book Printing UK
• Release date: May 8, 2023
• ISBN: 9781399949170

Book preview

The Adventures of Hare and Snail.

Book One

The Frog Prince.

Written and illustrated by Angie K James

Edited by S C Mantle

©angelakjames.com2023

Introduction.

Between a river and the sea is a little hill, nestled halfway up the hill is a yellow cottage, home to ‘the gardener’. The cottage is surrounded by a meadow at the back and a woodland to the side and a lawn that is bordered by hawthorn bushes, brambles and the odd bamboo stalk which the sparrows use as a look-out post. At the bottom of the lawn is a small pond where the stream collects during the rainy season, and there lives a frog. There’s also a fox, a clan of badgers, rather a lot of birds and insects of course, but most importantly a Hedge Brownie and his friend, a snail.

A Hedge Brownie is important because they are very useful to gardeners and are extremely good at keeping a garden running like clockwork, encouraging particular plants to grow in certain places and guiding the little creatures to where they are needed the