Nigel Hinton

The last time I saw a book by Hinton I must have been around 10 years old, that book was Buddy and I studied it in school. I never realised he had also written books for adults so when I spotted Heart of the Valley I had to pick it up.

We follow a year in the life of a family of Dunnocks(Hedge Sparrows) and all the trials and tribulations that follow. As with other great tales of the genre (Tarka the Otter springs to mind) it isn't all nice and fluffy, and the grim reality of being a small show more animal in the Kent countryside is brought home. Predators and weather threaten your life at every moment and it's a wonder that anything really flourishes, after all, how many sparrows do we all see everyday and never give a thought to their little lives?

I suppose my favourite thing about Heart is that it manages to be thought provoking without being preachy, a skill many of today's authors could do with acquiring. It makes you realise the impact your own actions have on surrounding wildlife, for instance the lady who feeds the birds everyday, when she falls ill and cannot get to the garden then go unfed which results in the death of some. But the biggest realisation for me came in the form of when humans intervene and rescue animals. I have never really thought that if I rescue an injured owl then you are saving that one life but in all reality condemning hundreds of its prey to their death. Would those animals have otherwise survived and helped their own population flourish?

It lost a star for me only because of when it detoured into the personal lives of the human family, I really wanted the book to remain with the animals and it slightly sidetracked me.,

All in all, this book will stay with me a long time, and has given a whole new appreciation of the British countryside. What more could a book do? show less

This is a story intended for adults from children's novelist, Nigel Hinton. He is perhaps better known for classics like "Buddy" and "Buddy's Song" (Buddy was dramatised by children's BBC and starred Roger Daltry).

To me, this book was the literary equivalent of a silent movie, chronicling a year in the life of a family of Dunnocks (Hedge Sparrows) in a rural Kent.

And rural Kent is anything but a bucolic idyll. The author tells it like it is: a world where sex, struggle, and starvation show more prevail and just about everything is out to eat everything else.

Straightforwardly written in an almost documentary style, this fiction is without anthropomorphism. The needs, drives, and motivations of the animal (and human) characters are made dramatically clear to the reader based on the author's own insightful observations.

A well-written tale that will charm, shock, and delight its reader. show less

Well, the four book saga that I started when I was seven (well my teacher started) is finally done and I don't know that I'm entirely happy about it. It was a great story, perhaps slightly more grown up than the earlier books with some philosophical ideas being explored (albeit in a simplistic manner) but a fun romp all the same. It did not feel like the end of the story to me. Yea sure, they defeated the Prince of Darkness but it wasn't a complete defeat. I was hoping for the overall show more destruction of the big bad. show less

Ryan buys an amazing phone at a car boot sale for a bargain price...almost too good to be true. When he gets it home, it seems to intuitively know what he wants to do or who he wants to call which is awesome until he keeps turning itself on in the middle of the night and strange things appear on the front screen.
This one is for older teenage boys as the phone keeps showing them porn!!
It is a "be careful what you wish for" story with the added complications of Ryan not liking his Mum's new show more partner, his step Dad Colin and the family dynamics that go with that. At times Ryan is a seriously unlike-able brat in the way he talks to his step Dad, but it is ultimately Colin who helps Ryan break the phone's addiction before it is too late. show less