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Tom's Midnight GardenPhilippa Pearce
Tom's Midnight Garden
by Philippa Pearce
Sent away to a flat with no garden, Tom hears the hall clock strike thirteen and finds a great Victorian garden outside where the yard should be.
A story about children, thoughtful and gentle in tone. We would put it with children of 9–12, and at a reading age of about 10 for reading alone.
Nothing flagged
We have not flagged any content in this one that a parent would usually want warning about.
Our take on this book
Packed off to a poky flat with an aunt and uncle while his brother has measles, bored and sleepless Tom hears the hall's grandfather clock strike thirteen, opens the back door and finds a vast Victorian garden where by day there is only a bin yard. Night after night he returns, and befriends a lonely girl named Hatty who seems to belong to another time entirely. Philippa Pearce's novel, from 1958, is one of the most beautifully written children's books in the language — a time-slip story that is really about time itself, loneliness, and growing up, and it arrives at an ending that quietly takes your breath away. It is gentle and slow in the best sense, with no villains and no scares, rewarding a patient reader with something that deepens as it goes. For a thoughtful nine- to twelve-year-old it is a book that can be loved now and reread as an adult with even more feeling.
If they like this, try these
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Or let them write their own.
Nothing gets a child reading like a story they invented themselves. Your child plans the characters and the plot, and we write, illustrate and print it as a real book with their name on the cover as the author.
Find another book
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