Philippa Pearce - Tom's Midnight Garden, etc.

[Rob Houghton]

Minnow On The Say is my favourite Philippa Pearce book too. Another book by her is The Way To Sattin Shore about a girl called Kate who never knew her Dad but has always missed having him. She visits the gravestone with his name on it but when the gravestone disappears she has to solve the mystery by delving into her family's past. All the clues point to one place, Sattin Shore.

Stop recommending books!!! That one sounds right up my street too!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Ah yes - I read The Way to Sattin Shore as a child, shortly after reading Tom's Midnight Garden, and I loved it. It's mysterious and keeps the reader guessing.

[Courtenay]

Ooh, I hadn't heard of that one! It also sounds well worth looking for. But I'll read Minnow on the Say first, as it's specifically set on the River Cam (renamed the Say) and that's exactly where I'll be in a couple of weeks' time. The rest of the Philippa Pearce oeuvre can wait until I've got more time (if I ever have)!

[sixret]

Do you keep your childhood books other than Enid Blyton? Most of my childhood books were gone now.

[sixret]

Philippa Pearce books are abundant. Very easy to buy and cheap. Many are available as ebooks. So no hurry.

[Courtenay]

Do you keep your childhood books other than Enid Blyton?

Oh yes! Nearly all of them. Well, I think my parents probably gave away some of the books we had when we were really little, but I'm sure we've kept all the best ones. Even if we haven't, these days with the internet it's quite easy to track down copies of classic children's books, although it's not always cheap to buy them...

[Daisy]

I have kept all mine. In spite of having two younger sisters, they (the books) somehow survived when I was away at college and I took them with me when I married.

[John Pickup]

Do you keep your childhood books other than Enid Blyton?

Most of the books I read as a child were borrowed from the library but the ones I kept were the early Armada paperbacks I bought or had bought for me by authors such as Malcolm Saville, Ralph Hammond as well as the FFO series by Enid. Unfortunately, many of these paperbacks became brittle and lost their pages as the glue on the binding dried up! I have very few left now as I have replaced them with hardcovers.

[Rob Houghton]

I stil have most of my books I had as a child - even board books and very early ones from when I couldn't read!

[Anita Bensoussane]

I kept nearly all of my non-Blyton childhood books (mainly Ladybird books, annuals and Puffin paperbacks) as well as the Blyton ones, of course. Even though some of them have pages which are loose and/or browning, they're still cherished. Besides Enid Blyton, I collected E. Nesbit, C. S. Lewis, Noel Streatfeild, Laura Ingalls Wilder, Nina Bawden, L. M. Montgomery and Antonia Forest. I also had just one or two titles by a wide range of other authors, Philippa Pearce being one of them. Other books that I read repeatedly as a child include Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl, When Marnie Was There by Joan G. Robinson, Charlotte Sometimes by Penelope Farmer, A Candle in Her Room by Ruth M. Arthur, The Dolls' House by Rumer Godden and The Secret Garden and A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

[Rob Houghton]

I must admit my main author was Enid Blyton - followed by E Nesbit - I read five or six of her books as a kid and many others as an adult.

I never read any Roald Dahl as a child - hated him! I mainly read EB, E Nesbit, CS Lewis, a few classics like Tom Sawyer and Wind In the Willows (which I disliked) - one off books like Mystery of the Island by Isobel Knight, a few books based on films like Bedknobs and Broomsticks and The Fox and the Hound, and loads of annuals - Beano, Whizzer and Chips, Whoopee, Buster etc.

When I was young I had Rupert annuals and teddy Bear annuals, Playhour annuals, then moved up to Scooby Doo and Muppet Show annuals etc.

I have to own up and say that between the ages of about 13 (when I stopped reading Enid Blyton temporarily) and 18 I hardly read anything apart from annuals, comics, and books about old movies and history. I was a typical teenage boy who stopped reading books altogether except those I had to read for 'O' Level and 'A' Level.

[Courtenay]

I was just reading the first few pages of this thread from when it started a few years ago, and Anita, I just wanted to say I was touched by what you said (at the end of this post) about how you first read Minnow on the Say and why that book is special to you. Thank you for sharing that story — very moving.

[Rob Houghton]

I agree - very moving, Anita. I also feel quite moved by the idea that you had your grand father so long and were an adult when he died. How lucky you were! My Welsh Nana died when I was 27, but we weren't terribly close, my mom's dad when I was 18, my mom's mom when I was 10 and my dad's dad when I was 2. I envy those who had grand parents well into adulthood.

It struck me, also, thinking about 'Tom's Midnight Garden' how much it reminded me of Julie's book 'The Mysterious Boy' -- or rather, Julie's book reminds me of Tom's Midnight Garden! It surely must have been a subconscious inspiration!

[Anita Bensoussane]

Thanks, Courtenay and Rob. I still have one grandmother (my mum's mum), wife of my grandad whom I mentioned earlier in the thread. When I was born she became a grandmother at the age of 40, and she now has 5 great-grandchildren - the eldest being my daughter who is 22.

My dad's parents were considerably older when they became grandparents. They died only months apart when I was 24.

[Julie2owlsdene]

It struck me, also, thinking about 'Tom's Midnight Garden' how much it reminded me of Julie's book 'The Mysterious Boy' -- or rather, Julie's book reminds me of Tom's Midnight Garden! It surely must have been a subconscious inspiration!

Lucky Star on a review of my book on Amazon also said that it reminded him of Tom's Midnight Garden. But when I wrote The Mysterious Boy I had heard of Tom's Midnight Garden, but had never read it. I first read it just a few years ago when Eddie bought me a copy, as I confessed it's a classic I'd never picked up. My inspiration for my book was the area I lived in and the scene I used to see and pass on my daily walk with our dog at the time, down to the forest.