Memorial Day weekend marks the beginning of summer. For children summer often means more unstructured time when they can enjoy their own activities.
The hero of our book of the day, Philippa Pearce’s Tom’s Midnight Garden, Tom Long has been looking forward to his summer idyll with his brother, Peter. But Peter comes down with the measles, and Tom gets sent off to stay with relatives even though he doesn’t want to go. Fortunately Tom finds unusual attractions in their home. At midnight, after the clock downstairs rings thirteen times, he can enter a magical garden. There he encounters an enchanting girl named Hatty. They build a tree house together and ice skate for miles over a river. Hatty begins to grow older during these nighttime vigils. Slowly Tom comprehends that although Hatty lives in the same house that he does, she comes from another time.
In the summer of 1951, Philippa Pearce lay in a hospital bed recovering from tuberculosis. She spent the summer thinking of her parents’ old mill house and garden, which stood near the River Cam. When she had recovered enough to work, she used this setting for Tom’s Midnight Garden. After she had finished the manuscript, she provided many photographs and sketches for the illustrator, so the drawings actually reflected details from Pearce’s childhood home.
Considered by British critics as the finest fantasy after The Hobbit of the twentieth century, Tom’s Midnight Garden has never been as well known in America as it is in England. Yet, like Wind in the Willows, Tom’s Midnight Garden can be appreciated by adults, as well as children, and seems even more profound with each rereading. As Pearce explores how present experience has been influenced by the past, she manages to weave an absolutely perfect time-travel fantasy novel that surprises me every time I come to the end, even though I know what will happen.
If you don’t know it or simply want to experience the story again, Tom’s Midnight Garden makes a fabulous beginning for a summer of reading. On this Memorial Day, as we honor our heroes and heroines of the past, we can also reflect on the profound way that our past intersects with the present.
Here’s a passage from Tom’s Midnight Garden:
The solitary skater had swerved away from them, and now came rushing across the ice on her skates—right across the meadow toward the hedge. Hatty—for it was Hatty—had seen Tom. “Oh, at least I saw something and I thought it might be you.” She peered doubtfully at Tom, even as she was gliding up on her last, long stroke.
She was opening the garden gate. “I’m so glad it is you, Tom! I miss you sometimes, even now—in spite of the Chapman girls being such good fun, and Barry and the others—in spite of the skating—Oh, Tom, skating! I feel as if I could go from here to the end of the world, if all the world were ice! I feel as free as a bird—as I’ve never felt before! I want to go so far—so far!”
Also recommended:
- Crossing Stones by Helen Frost
Additional Information
A few other events for
- Happy birthday Frances Barnes-Murphy (The Fables of Aesop) and Kevin Eastman (Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).
- It’s the birth date of Cornelia Otis Skinner (1901-1979), Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, Countee Cullen (1903-1946), The Lost Zoo, and Millicent E. Selsam (1912-1996), Greg’s Microscope.
- On this day in 1859, Westminster’s Big Ben rang for the first time in London. Read Ben, the Bells and the Peacock by Rhoda Trooboff, illustrated by Cecile Bucher.
- Happy 100th birthday to the Indianapolis 500 auto race, first held in 1911. Read The Wheels on the Race Car by Alex Zane, illustrated by James Warhola.
- It’s Water a Flower Day. Read Alison’s Zinnia by Anita Lobel.