THE COUNTRY CHILD is a semi-autobiographical story about a girl growing up in the country before the First World War. Alison Uttley has drawn on her own youth to produce memories so vivid and nostalgic that you can almost smell the honeysuckle and hear the owls calling at dusk. She writes about the small intense joys and sorrows of life on a small farm: the fun of haymaking, the sadness of favourite animals being slaughtered, and the close sweetness of Christmas celebrations in the farmhouse kitchen. Also in A Puffin Book: A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley