Saturday Rave: Little Grey Rabbit's May Day by Alison Uttley.

I've treasured my copy of this book for over forty years.

It's a slim squarish hardback. It has a cobalt blue dust-jacket, and exquisite watercolour pictures by Margaret Tempest on every other spread.
The vignette on the dust jacket is surrounded by white silhouettes of garlands and posies of flowers. The endpapers show a very beautiful pen and ink drawing of a cottage in a winter wood. This and the type throughout are also in cobalt blue.


See? A treasure.

The story, too, is full of delight and joy. It describes Crown Imperials growing in an old lady's garden, just as Crown Imperials grew in my own grandmother's garden. This made the magic of May Day seem marvellously close.

How to keep May Day?...You ought to know. May is the Queen of the flowers. You must make crowns and sceptres for her. She's invisible, but you hang them on a may tree and she will find them.

So Little Grey Rabbit and her friends make a procession fit for a queen.

I still value this little story very much because it made me think that if the Queen of May herself noticed such small poor creatures as Hare and Water Rat, then perhaps I'd not be entirely overlooked myself.

Word To Use Today:  sceptre. This word comes through French and Latin from the Greek word skeptron, which means staff.