Tom's midnight garden- any others?

Does anyone remember a book called Playing Beattie Bow? I can’t remember the author but I think it may have had a similar theme of time slip. It featured leg less man on a trolley (set in Victorian times). I remember loving it and finding it very creepy - similar feeling to Come Back, Lucy

I was going to say this!

I loved this. Might reread.

I didn't read PL Travers as a child but read Mary Poppins to my daughter, it was really funny and Mary was not as I expected- she was hilarious!

I never read any of PL Travers' Mary Poppins books as a child but loved Friend Monkey. I don't remember much of the plot but the feeling of sadness resonates with me.

If you haven't come across it, try Friend Monkey - PL Travers. A lovely and charming book but with strands of sadness too.

I’ve just started reading Astercote by Penelope Lively, it’s a time slip story about the Black Death.

Yes, I second that. I'm not a religious believer, but I still love Lewis. He is a superb writer. Tolkien's The Hobbit is also worth reading. I actually prefer The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings. The fascinating thing about Lewis and Tolkien is that both were Oxford professors. Intellectually, they were top of the food chain. These were men who read Dante out loud to one another in Italian, or spent the evening together translating Wagner from German. Tolkien knew 20 + languages and Lewis seemed to have read literally everything, often in the original language. He knew Plato and Aristotle and Homer back to front in the original Greek, and had read pretty much everything ever written in Latin. Yet they could also produce such charming, sweet, funny and imaginative books for kids. Even though you're reading books for children, you can feel these vast minds at work behind them.

The journalist Lucy Mangan wrote a brilliant book called Bookworm: a memoir of childhood reading.
She describes growing up and the books she loved at each stage, including Tom’s Midnight Garden. It prompted me to reread it and several others. Very comforting!

I have really been enjoying this thread. Tom's Midnight Garden is possibly my favourite children's book. Apart from anything else, it is beautifully written and the ending never fails to bring a lump to the throat. I was going to suggest some of the books that others already have. Come back, Lucy is edgier and definitely more menacing, but a fantastic book. Helen Cresswell wrote a timeslip book called Up the Pier and When Marnie Was There is beautiful. I devoured Noel Streatfeild's books as a child and a particular favourite ŵas The Growing Summer (not timeslip). I was a child in the seventies and I realise now how fortunate my generation was with the high quality of children's literature that was written in the middle of the twentieth century.

Read TMG at school and studied it recently uni.
Lovely book.

Oh I remember that! Read it in English lessons, that was good!

Love so many of these. Charlotte Sometimes is my all-time favourite. And Marianne Dreams.

The Tricksters is another good Margaret Mahy.

The Children of Winter (Berlie Doherty) time slip about the plague in Eyam
A parcel of patterns (Jill Paton Walsh)

Stars of Fortune by Cynthia Harnett (or anything else by her).

And yes to The Dark is Rising, Eagle of the Ninth, Green Knowe, Charlotte Sometimes.

@cariadlet

I love E Nesbit, I recently bought The Enchanted Castle as I hadn't read it as a child.

I still love The Wind in the Willows and as on other threads, I have promised myself a re-read in 2025

I came back to recommend Leon Garfield. He wrote a book called The Apprentices which I read over and over. Also Robert Westall - brilliantly spooky.

Oh..I very recently reread Smith by Leon garfield..Great book

Also books by BB...in particular the little grey men. About the last gnomes I britain...just fabulous

Puddles in the Lane

I love many of the books already suggested.

One author that I haven't seen recommended so far is Leon Garfield who wrote fantastic historical novels for children. Rosemary Sutcliff, Geoffrey Trease, Henry Treece, Barbara Leoni Picard (my favourite was The Young Pretenders) and Cynthia Harnett were also very good historical writers for children.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett has been mentioned. A Little Princess and The Lost Prince are 2 other wonderful books by her.

And no discussion of classic children's literature would be complete without mentioning E Nesbit who wrote great every day life stories such as The Railway Children and The Story of the Treasure Seekers as well as fantasies such as Five Children & It and The Phoenix & The Carpet.

I loved A Traveller in Time! I ordered a new copy because mine was read so many times it fell to bits.
I read it again recently, just as good as I remembered!

I'm going to echo the suggestion for Marnie Was There by Joan G Robinson. It was my favourite book as a child, so much so, that if I had a daughter I was going to call her Marnie! (I had two sons instead). It was out of print for years but had a bit of a comeback when Studio Ghibli made an animated film of it which is beautifully done even it is does change the story slightly.
Also Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr (which gave my son nightmares!)

Good modern authors/books (just in case you’ve missed them):
Ross Welford, Time Travelling with a Hamster. The 1000-Year-Old Boy
Frances Hardinge, The Lie Tree, Fly By Night
Emma Carroll, Letters from the Lighthouse
SF Said, Varjak Paw
Michelle Paver, Wolf Brother
Morris Gleitzman, Once (and series)
Louis Sachar, Holes

They made it in to a TV series in the 1970s OP it's worth looking out for.

That's my favourite moment in a book of wonderful moments.

Most of the books I love have already been mentioned, creepy children's books are my favourite genre!
One good one not been mentioned though, 'Wait Till Helen Comes' by Mary Downing Hahn