hedgehogs Archives - HodgePodgeDays

Hedgehogs Don’t Live in the City is a lovely book by Lucy Reynolds and illustrated by Jenna Herman. It’s about a brother and sister, Archie and Grace, who go on an autumnal walk and discover a little family of hedgehogs.

Hedgehogs Don’t Live in the City is a gorgeous nature trail of a book, with lots of wildlife tucked away on each page to spot. The pages are alive with autumnal colours, with brightly coloured leaves littering the book. The children and the buildings are somewhat grayer, and all the natural things are as colourful as nature allows.

Book Review: Hedgehogs Don't Live in the City

The words are the understated star of this book. They’re gloriously descriptive; whipping winds, pounding footsteps and dancing leaves. Hedgehogs Don’t Live in the City really draws you in and you can almost smell the mellow fruitfulness of autumn.

Towards the back of the book there are pages of hedgehog facts and pages about how you can help hedgehogs in your own garden. I find hedgehogs are well-loved little creatures and children really enjoy reading and learning all about them. This is a lovely book to give to a little one who loves hedgehogs and nature.

Book Review: Hedgehogs Don't Live in the City

Hedgehogs Don’t Live in the City is suitable for ages 4-8. It is a lovely autumnal read and probably a great accompaniment to a nature trail too. The illustrations are beautiful, but for me, it’s a real joy of a book to read out loud, both for me and my son.

A Hedgehogs Don’t Live in the City by Lucy Reynolds costs £7.99 in paperback. It is published by Doodles & Scribbles and it is available from a wide range of bookshops and to order directly from Doodles & Scribbles.

If you enjoyed this review of Hedgehogs Don’t Live in the City, you might also be interested in The Hedgehog and her Hoglet.

Disclosure: We were sent a copy of Hedgehogs Don’t Live in the City for review purposes. All images and opinions are our own.

It may be September, but the world has suddenly slipped into autumn. Autumn is one of my favourite seasons, full of mellow fruitfulness, crunchy leaves and an excuse to get our open fire lit and roaring. The small boy and I have been noticing the changes around us on our walks, the berries in the hedgerows, the acorns and conkers starting to fall from the trees and the busy squirrels stocking up for the lean winter months. This lead us to start talking about hibernation and the snuffling, shuffling hedgehogs which we rarely see by often read about.

We were sent a box of ceramic hedgehog tealight holders to paint from craft company Baker Ross, so one afternoon after our autumnal walk we sat down and painted them up.

Hedgehog Tealight Holders

The box contained four plain white ceramic hedgehog tealight holders and we used some paint which we were sent to decorate them. A box of four ceramic hedgehog tealight holders currently costs just £4.40, which I think is good value and you can paint them up as presents for people.

Hedgehog Tealight Holders

I chose to paint mine blue with multi-coloured spots and the small boy wanted to paint his black and red. As you can see from the picture he was really focused on the task and he sat and painted his hedgehog for about half an hour or so. This is a great craft activity which works to strengthen his hand muscles, improve his hand-eye co-ordination and his attention to detail.

Hedgehog Tealight Holders

While we were painting we chatted away about hedgehogs and I looked up a few hedgehog facts for him. Did you know….?

A baby hedgehog is called a hoglet
Each hedgehog has about 5000 spiky spines, each one falls out after about a year
Hedgehogs hibernate in the winter, they eat as much as they can and then find a cosy nest to curl up in for the winter around October
A hedgehog is nocturnal and only comes out at night to forage for food
A hedgehogs favourite food is slugs – yukky!

Hedgehog Tealight Holders

Here are our finished hedgehog tealight holders. We’re very proud of them. They were easy to paint and I think they look really good. Despite my initial thought that the black and red hedgehog might look a bit gothic, I think he’s managed to create quite an interesting effect. He’s incredibly proud of his creation and loved to show it off to visitors and enjoys me lighting it at night.