The Hazel Wood: 1

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Hazel has long been associated with the dormouse (also known as the hazel dormouse). Not only are hazelnuts eaten by dormice to fatten up for hibernation, but in spring the leaves are a good source of caterpillars, which dormice also eat. If you’re expecting there to be a romance building between Alice and Ellery, well, you’d be sort of wrong. There may be some fleeting feelings and moments between them, but soon other things start to happen and well…there just really wasn’t any romance at all in this book. Which I thought was sort of odd since it was fairy tale like in essence. I mean, a good chunk of fairy tales revolve around a romantic kind of love. Not all of them, true, and in this one we do see those other kinds of love, so that was nice in a sense too. Simply copying the dark tone of Grimm fairy tales isn’t enough, nor is turning the ‘unrealistic’ happy endings into grittier, more open-ended endings enough to give it a modern spin. In fact, I would argue that even today, people still want a happy ending, especially in fairy tales. They give us the hope we need to live and smile another day. Unfortunately, both places are where Tales from the Hinterlands falls short.

Although these stories are set in the Hinterland and are part of the series, the collection can be read as stand-alone stories as well. Someone who hasn't read the books but who loves dark fairy tales would still enjoy these 12 stories! I was all kinds of crazy excited for Melissa Albert’s debut, The Hazel Wood! It screamed fairy tale book all over! The cover is just gorgeous and bespeaks of the fairy tale delights (or not so delights as real fairy tales run kind of dark) ahead! While I found the book to be interesting for sure, I wasn’t as swept away as I would’ve hoped for. I’m not sure how to describe what I mean, but I will do my best. Hazel is a member of the birch family of trees, Betulaceae, and can grow to a height of 10 metres, although in Scotland it is usually no more than 6 metres tall. Typically it has a number of shoots or trunks branching out at, or just above, ground level, and this growth habit has led to some people referring to it as a bush rather than a tree, because it doesn’t meet the strict definition for a tree, of having a single stem that is unbranched near the ground. So, yeah, definitely not for me, but I would recommend this for those who like Wonderland retellings, and those who enjoy really lyrical prose over characters and/or plot. Elegant, ethereal, and beautifully brutal, The Hazel Wood is a fairy tale worth falling for. This is a dream of a book I cannot recommend highly enough. It’s like falling into a nautilus shell: every time you think you've found the end, another chamber opens. Absolutely breathtaking.” — Seanan McGuire, author of Every Heart a DoorwayThe pollen of hazel species, which are often the cause for allergies in late winter or early spring, can be identified under magnification (600×) by their characteristic granular exines bearing three conspicuous pores. [8] Species [ edit ]

Grimm's Fairy Tales meets Ransom Riggs in this deeply creepy, gorgeously illustrated collection of twelve original pitch-dark fairytales, from international bestselling author of The Hazel Wood, Melissa Albert.

This is a collection of fairy tales with more or less traditional themes (hero's quest, magic marriage, travels to the otherworld etc), inverted with a vengeance. Here is the first sentence of the first story, for instance:

Somehow, these stories managed to speak to people across different social classes, living in different countries and culture. Whether these stories travelled from one place and managed to take root in another, or whether they were created and evolved independently, the fact that they exist in so many forms is still absolutely remarkable. And somehow, these stories that resonate in the past, still resonate now, centuries later. I sat down hard, my knees giving out partway. One of the engagement ring women frowned at me and tapped her cup, like we were the kind of place that did free refills. Oh, just tempt me, I thought, but I was too weak to get mad. Paracrania chrysolepidella[Lepidoptera: Eriocraniidae] in Leaf and stem mines of British flies and other insects". www.ukflymines.co.uk . Retrieved 19 October 2023. What is it that makes Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales special? These stories originally started as oral folk tales, and somehow they were worth the effort of relating to others, and later compiling and publishing them, again and again until they reach us in the 21st century. So much history has been lost, but not these stories about fairy godmothers and princesses and talking animals. Fairy tales with similar plot or motifs are found in different cultures. The story of Cinderella, as a lowly girl who impressed a prince and was eventually identified by him through an article of clothing, existed in Ancient Greece, Middle East and China long before the Grimms added the story to their collection. To that end, classification systems have been created to categorise fairy tales according to their tropes.Archaeological evidence from pollen analysis has shown there was a rapid expansion in the range of hazel during the Mesolithic period (from 11,000 to 6,000 years ago). Because the large nuts are not dispersed over great distances by small mammals, this has led to speculation that Mesolithic peoples may have transported the nuts with them as a food source, and thereby aided the expansion of the tree’s range. Distribution in Scotland Hazel is a traditional material used for making wattle, withy fencing, baskets, and the frames of coracle boats. The tree can be coppiced, [14] and regenerating shoots allow for harvests every few years. There is a 7 year cycle (cut and grow) for hurdle (fence) making. [15]