This is such a different and interesting book! I'm glad I've read it, but I wish that I had read it as a child.

One of my all time favourite books for children. The characters are all brilliantly realistic and relatable. Although I have read this very differently as an adult, I still remember Tom's summer of boredom as painfully accurate to those long childhood days with "nothing to do". Is there genuinely another book out there that better captures the sense of childhood magic and wonder that appears when the clock strikes thirteen? Peerless. I would absolutely use this as a resource for UKS2, and would recommend to any avid reader as a great book to discover outside of the "usual" authors on a classroom bookshelf. Would also make a fantastic class book.

Book 32/100 of 2015

Poor Tom, forced to go away during the summer holiday while his brother suffers the measles, and kept indoors under quarantine. How old-fashioned is that? Between Tom's unattractive sulking and insomnia, my general lack of interest in gardening, and a personal fear that this was going to turn into one of those stories about a guy finding the perfect mate by traveling back to a time before feminism, well, I didn't have high hopes. But it turned out to be a story about falling in love with a place, instead of a person. That I enjoyed very much.

Read for uni assignment.

I think if I had read this when I was a child I would have really enjoyed it, but having to read it critically for an assignment as an adult, all I kept thinking was Tom was such a brat! It was also hard to enjoy a story when I was reading it for a specific purpose (responsibilities of a child in this time period).

I do like the mix of fantasy and reality, but I could have done with less of the Bible and demon references that seem to plague every kids book I've read in this course so far!

Czym jest czas?

Tom musi wyjechać do ciotki na kwarantannę, ponieważ jego brat Peter zachorował na odrę. Chłopiec nie jest zachwycony taką perspektywą spędzenia wakacji, ale nie ma dużo do gadania. W domu ciotki nie ma za wiele atrakcji, może poza starym zegarem i jego starą właścicielką, panią Bartholomew, przed którą drżą wszyscy mieszkańcy domu. Starsza pani nie jest duszą towarzystwa. Za to zegar... z zegarem wiąże się cała tajemnica.

Książka dla dzieci o podróżowaniu w czasie. Dla dorosłego cała tajemnica jest do rozgryzienia w tempie ekspresowym, ale dla młodszych czytelników ta historia może stanowić pewną zagadkę. Nie polubiłam głównego bohatera i raczej nie wrócę już do tej książki.
6/10

Fanciful...timey-wimey...too gentle and charming to be called sci-fi, but you get the idea.
In this book, written in the 50s, young Tom Long must go stay with his uncle and aunt to be quarantined in case he caught the measles from his brother.
While there, late at night, he hears the grandfather clock chime thirteen times. He discovers that at this mysterious signal, he is able to walk out the door into a beautiful garden that's not there during the day.
To begin with, he just enjoys playing and exploring. But eventually he makes friends with a girl named Hatty.
Who is she? When is she? And will Tom ever understand the enigma that is his Midnight Garden?
It's a really very touching story by the end, with a surprise twist that will give you all the feels. I suppose it was written for children, but it surprised me and I enjoyed it a lot. Think "The Secret Garden," but with the laws of physics bending. :D

I read this because of a discussion on the lovely Tea or Books podcast.

Sent to stay with his Uncle Alan and Aunt Gwen when his brother has the measles, Tom Long is bitterly disappointed and unhappy at the prospect of a dismal holiday spent at their flat, which takes up one floor of an old Victorian house. Lying awake late at night, he is puzzled when he hears the grandfather clock in the lobby striking thirteen, and going downstairs to investigate, he slips out of the house and into a mysterious garden that was not there during the daytime. As it transpires, Tom has slipped into the past, into the Victorian age, when the house was still a great mansion. Here, in this midnight garden, he meets and befriends Hatty, an orphaned girl come to stay in the house, and one of the only people in the past who can see him. They have many wonderful times together in the garden, but all things must come to an end, and one night Tom finds that he can no longer enter the midnight garden - he can no longer travel to the past. In despair, he thinks that he has lost Hatty. But has he...?

A haunting and brilliant tale, Tom's Midnight Garden is a book I first encountered as a young girl, reading it, loving it, and then, despite its story staying with me through the years, forgetting its title. I can remember many times, thinking of that odd, enchanted story I used to love about the boy, the grandfather clock that struck thirteen, and the nighttime garden. This was before computers were ubiquitous, and I wasn't sure how to track it down. I'm not sure why it didn't occur to me to ask a children's librarian, but in any case, I happened across it by accident one day, in my early twenties, snapped it up, and reread it. It was like coming home. Originally published in 1958, Tom's Midnight Garden won the Carnegie Medal that year, and it is not difficult to see why. It is an almost perfect book, addressing the pain of childhood, the joy and difficulty of friendship, and the nature of time and of dreaming in perceptive, sensitive ways. The conclusion, in which Tom discovers that old Mrs. Bartholomew, who is his aunt and uncle's landlady, is actually Hatty, grown old, and that it is her dreams of her own youth that have allowed him to travel to the past, always sends a shiver down my spine. They say the past is always with us, and I think that this is because we carry it with us - in our memories, and in our dreams. Philippa Pearce has chosen a unique way of exploring that idea, and she has done it brilliantly! Beautifully conceived, beautifully told, and beautifully written - this is a true classic, and is one I enjoy rereading from time to time, since rediscovering it.

If I ever need to cry, I pick up this book (one of my favourites) and skim right to the end, to the line: "he put his arms right round her and hugged her good-bye as if she were a little girl." What a beautiful book this is - I was not a child when I read this but I want to read this to my children one day.

I loved this book. If you liked the Secret garden then you'll love this book. I especially liked the descriptions of how Able kept the garden.

Oooh for some reason I really enjoyed this book. Time travel is always pretty confusing for me, since I try to grasp everything going on, but it's nice to sometimes abandon yourself into reading and stop trying to make out all the logic and paradoxes...

Tom travels to the past, Hetty can see the future, and a pair of ice skates travel between centuries. It sounded weird that Hetty lived in the late 1800s and a kid from modern times saw her, but then I had to remind myself that the book was first published in 1958. All made sense afterwards. Kinda.

I think one of my favorite parts was that none of the characters were dead ghosts or something. Well for the most part, I guess. Though it would be amazing if we could go back in time using our dreams, right?

Overall, this would be one of the books I wouldn't mind rereading several times. Take this coming from someone who almost never ever rereads anything haha. Except notes before tests, of course :p

I never read this as a child, but now having read it as an adult, I can really appreciate everything about this wonderful story. I think child me would have enjoyed the adventure and the excitement of the time-slip, but I would have never have fully appreciated the writing or understood the time-slip explanation. So reading it as an adult was a real treat.