A book lover's guide to building a brilliant children's library
by Lucy Mangan , The Guardian, Saturday 3 January 2009

No 12 Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce (1958)

Oh, the complete and utter agony of waiting for the next instalment of Tom's Midnight Garden.
My beloved Mrs Pugh was reading it to us in brief, precious bursts every day before we had to put our chairs on tables ready for hometime. I therefore spent much of 1984 wishing a short, but painful, death on fellow 10-year-olds who kept delaying us by mucking about and cutting into the 25 minutes on which my day's happiness had come to depend.

Because the story of Tom Long, who is sent away to stay with relatives while his brother is ill, is exquisite. Lonely and bored, Tom discovers that when the grandfather clock in the communal hallway - on whose casing is carved the words from Revelation: "Time no longer" - strikes 13, the magnificent garden that once belonged to the house before it was carved up into flats is restored to it - along with the equally lonely Hatty who used to play there as a child and who becomes Tom's night-time companion. Tom gradually realises that he is returning to the 19th century, but it takes a visit from his brother to show him that time in the garden is moving on and Hatty is growing up. One night, he at last becomes as invisible to her. Soon after that, the garden disappears too and it is almost time for Tom to go home.


There is one last twist, which I am not going to spoil for you, partly because I cannot bring myself to rob you of its power and pleasure by baldly summarising it, and partly because if I had to learn, through Mrs Pugh's meagre apportionments, the painful lesson of deferred gratification, I am most certainly going to force the experience on to others too, wherever I can.

At the time, however, I was so firmly locked in a battle of wills with my teacher that I restrained myself from asking my father to buy the book for me so that I could read on ahead. But as soon as Mrs Pugh had turned the final page, I dragged him down to Dillons so that I could read the whole thing for myself - in one sitting, free from the desire to stab Darren Jones in the heart with his ever-clattering pencil - a process that yielded a better sense of the finely honed shape of the book and its careful, masterly pacing and let me linger over the beauty of the prose and the wealth of possibilities offered by its suggestion that the past and the present could merge into each other if only you knew where to look.

I have re-read it countless times since then. Within three pages, I am my 10-year-old self again. Within six, I am with Tom in his 1950s world and after that we are both in the Victorian garden again with Hatty and the yew trees and hedges that preceded and will outlast them all. Time no longer.

FOOTNOTE
I share Lucy Mangan's enthusiasm for Tom's Midnight Garden. I first read it as an adult back in the 60's in my bookselling days and subsequently I used to sell it to everyone I could. It was always a best-seller with us as a result. I recall it was part of the very fine children's paperback list of that time published by Oxford University Press. I rate it one of the great children's books of all time and it is interesting to recall that it has been made into television on three occasons, has been performed on stage and made into a movie. A great great book. It also won the Carnegie Medal the year of its publication. If you haven't read it then treat yourself soon.
I met Philippa Pearce on one occasion in the UK, when she was the children's editor at Andre Deutsch. Recently a Memorial Lecture has been set up in her honour.
My thanks to Lucy Mangan and The Guardian for reminding me of Tom's Midnight Garden and its talented creator.