I recently found a paperback copy of this book in a local second-hand bookshop. I remember seeing it as a rickety old BBC televison children's drama when I was a kid and recalled it had something to do with time travel and clocks striking thirteen!
The main character is a boy called Tom who winds up for the summer holidays in a flat in an old dull house, in a town near the Fens. Not much of a story to be had from this unpromising set-up you might think, but you'd be wrong. Longing for a garden to play in and someone to share it with, he is dismayed to find that there isn't another child for miles and only a dusty yard out back.
However, when the clock strikes thirteen one evening, Tom is amazed to find the back door suddenly opens out onto the garden he longs for, wide and rambling, with trees to climb. And there is a friend to play with too, adventurous, lonely Hatty, an orphan girl who has come to live with cousins. Yet all is not what it first seems.
Why is Hatty sometimes Tom's own age, sometimes older, once a very small weeping child in black? Why can only Hatty appear to see him? Can a garden itself be a ghost? Can you enter someone else's dreams?
This book first appeared in 1958 and won the Carnegie Medal for that year. I must admit I really enjoyed it. The writer manages to keep the mystery going right to the end and as for the final twist in the plot. Well, I'm hardly likely to reveal that am I?
Mr Mudd
The main character is a boy called Tom who winds up for the summer holidays in a flat in an old dull house, in a town near the Fens. Not much of a story to be had from this unpromising set-up you might think, but you'd be wrong. Longing for a garden to play in and someone to share it with, he is dismayed to find that there isn't another child for miles and only a dusty yard out back.
However, when the clock strikes thirteen one evening, Tom is amazed to find the back door suddenly opens out onto the garden he longs for, wide and rambling, with trees to climb. And there is a friend to play with too, adventurous, lonely Hatty, an orphan girl who has come to live with cousins. Yet all is not what it first seems.
Why is Hatty sometimes Tom's own age, sometimes older, once a very small weeping child in black? Why can only Hatty appear to see him? Can a garden itself be a ghost? Can you enter someone else's dreams?
This book first appeared in 1958 and won the Carnegie Medal for that year. I must admit I really enjoyed it. The writer manages to keep the mystery going right to the end and as for the final twist in the plot. Well, I'm hardly likely to reveal that am I?
Mr Mudd
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