Rating:  -
Ah, rereading this book took me back. It really has everything a child could want from a story - sympathetic characters, some sentiment, some action, and an excellent ending. Incidentally, BBC television did a very good dramatisation of this in the 1970s. I'm sure today's children wouldn't mind a repeat.
Rating:  -
I discovered this book when I bought it to read to my children. Pure delight for fantasy lovers. You won't be able to put it down.
Rating: -
This book was, as others have pointed out, something I read as a child. The book itself was on loan to me from a friend of the family.
Years later I inquired with her what indeed that book was, having forgotten over time. She told me and I instantly went and bought it.
It's a WONDERFUL story, a sort-of child-like love story. I personally think that they should make it into a movie.
Rating: -
I first read this book at age 12, and still love it today at age 50. As a child, I loved it as a mystery, a ghost story. As I grew older, I loved it for its delving into the mysteries of time and space and religion. Now, it seems to me, most of all, a story of how two lonely children - a liitle boy named Tom and a little girl named Hattie - found each other's worlds and shared their lives. The ending never fails to move me to tears.
Rating: -
"Tom's Midnight Garden" belongs on any "Best Novels of the 20th Century" list. I came to "Midnight Garden" through Pearce's other books. Read her ghost stories (many about animals), and tales of English urban and suburban children's lives. Ms. Pearce never talks down to children, treating her readers and creations with respect. Also, the adult insights and regrets that we may have forgotten experiencing when we were young, abound in her work. She is very wise. A quick example: A boy dreads a family get together for great grandmother's 100th birthday celebration because of a vicious, bullying cousin. Nevertheless, the terrible reunion day arrives. During a game of hide and seek, as the bully chases our hero, he happens to duck into a quiet room only to find that the 100 year old grandmother has been warehoused there, wheeled out of the way at her own party. Even though age and infirmity have rendered her hardly able to speak, it seems that she senses the boy's fear as the door handle turns and the bully comes inside. As the bully advances into the room, it's silence is broken by a hideous, ghostly wail. Bully runs terrified from the hellish moan, and great-grandmother's face has a slight smile on it, the only (other) physical action she can manifest. She has moaned and (do I remember correctly?) popped her teeth out and protected the boy the only way she can. But that's not all. Our boy gets away, but thinking back on the incident, wishes he had properly thanked great grandmother for her help. (And here is the greatness of Pearce's art) The obligations not met, connections never made, the friend in need never thanked, the other-aged comrade with whom we now know we should have connected, the good words not spoken, Pearce always has woven into the cloth of the story. The immensity of life and our day-late-dollar-short performance in the world is there to be recognized along with the humor and action of the story. This is bittersweet, profound fiction but no moral is grafted on to her tales. It is there to be seen for he (or she) who has eyes with which to see it. Philippa Pearce, who was a BBC radio dramatist before becoming a children's author, is one of the very fine writers of our century.
|
