Hazel Green

When I was about nine or ten, I loved the Hazel Green series and basically grew up on Odo Hirsch stories. Now I am still in love with the books and note my pen-name: Hazel Green has got to be my favourite literary character. "Hazel Green" follows the adventures of a girl(Hazel) in her urban environment around her. The characters are true and believable, and the most enjoyable things about this book and the others in the series is the way that they describe the ordinary life of normal people in the neighbourhood - but it hooks you. It is delightful to learn how the local florist arranges her flowers, how the fish shop owner obtains his fish, and you lick your lips at all the amazing delicacies on sale at the bakery. The reader is put into the the shoes of someone in Hazel's vicinity, who is delightful company with her charismatic and childish but frank and true personality that reflects exactly what it feels like to be a child. THe other thing that Odo Hirsch has managed to do is make a sort of soap-opera about the kids and shop-owners in the neighbourhood of the Moody building and other places in the urban setting. He manages to make the completely normal problems in life interesting as Hazel, inquisitively, tries to solve the problems and mysteries of her neighbourhood.