Synopsis: When Tom is sent to stay at his aunt and uncle’s house for the summer, he resigns himself to endless weeks of boredom. As he lies awake in his bed he listens to the grandfather clock chiming in the hall downstairs. Eleven… Twelve… Thirteen… Tom races down the stairs and finds, outside the back door, a wonderful garden. A garden everyone told him didn’t exist. Tom’s midnight garden is full of magic and adventure, and children too. Are they ghosts? Or is it Tom who is really the ghost…

Review: Winner of the 1958 Carnegie Medal this is a beautifully written time slip novel. Despite its 1950s setting it is still an accessible story with lots of appealing detail and description. As adults we may read about Tom’s garden with a sense of nostalgia for our own long summer holidays but children too will enjoy Tom’s sense of adventure and freedom. Each visit to the garden brings some new revelation about Hatty which help the reader and Tom to understand how time is shifting and just as Tom desperately wants to keep returning to his garden so the reader will find this a compelling and magical story.

The 2000 film adaptation is still available so book and film could be used together.

2008-06-07