This charming book is a fictionalized account of a part of children's book author Beatrix Potter's life, with facts coming from biographies and from Miss Potter's journals. I don't usually like books with talking animals, but they only talk to each other and not the people (well, they try, but the people can't understand them), and Albert has done such a great job of re-creating English village life in the early 1900s and drawing interesting characters and situations that I kept reading even after the animals started talking. The pace is slow but the plot and especially characters are a good read, and I plan to read the other volumes in this series of about five books. If you liked the movie Miss Potter, you may enjoy this book.