Help me find this children's time slip novel I read in the 80s/90s please

[TheIncredibleBookEatingManchot]

I'm afraid I don't remember much about it, except that I loved it so I this could be pretty tough...

It was about a girl who I think was on holiday in a small village. It was definitely somewhere quite rural. Somehow she slips into the past, I think she goes back and forth between past and present in the book.

Towards the end the villagers in the past have a party or fête of some kind in a field. A young couple in love are dancing together. Then the girl's back in the present and she sees an oak tree that the young couples' initials were carved in long ago and there's something about somewhere that man will always be dancing with his sweetheart.

I read it in primary school so it can't have been published any later than 1991. I think it had quite an old feel about it though, so it could have been published much earlier than that.

This has been bugging me for years and years. I thought I had found it a few years ago when out of nowhere the words "A Stitch in Time by Penelope Lively" came into my head and I googled it and discovered it actually existed. But although there are some similarities, girl on holiday, time slip, oak tree, there are no dancing villagers carving their initials. I read A Traveller in Time by Alison Uttley recently after seeing it mentioned somewhere on Mumsnet, but though I think the book I remember had a similar feel to it it's not the one.

Please, please can anyone help me?

Any of these OP? www.goodreads.com/list/show/72120.Timeslip_in_Children_s_Fiction

This thread has brought back lots of memories of children’s tv and books in the 70s / 80s

I knew as soon as I read the opening part of your post that it would be Polly Flint!I absolutely loved it, wonderful programme. My lovely friend found episodes on YouTube for me - many happy hours there OP!

Thanks for all your replies.

I'm pretty certain CatChant got it right with The Secret World of Polly Flint.

I've ordered a copy of it so hopefully soon after 30+ years will be enjoying it again.

I really should have asked Mumsnet for help finding it sooner.

I too a fan of Green Knowe! I’d love to read more stories like those today.

I have the The children of green knowe on DVD @CatChant @Tanaqui The green knowe books are some of my favourites and I read them once a year!

OP really glad you've found the book. I loved it too. This thread is amazing, timeslip fiction is my absolute favourite genre. I've read all of the books on this thread so far, still very firm favourites from my childhood and reread to dc.

zen1 thank you so, so much. The link you posted has more to discover!

Much as I enjoy re-reading, does anyone have suggestions for any adult time slip books?

Yes, thanks Zen1 for your link, lots to discover and rediscover there.

Auntie All.I can think of off the top of my head for adult novels is Susanna Kearsley. I think most of her novels are time slips. I'll try and remember some more.

@Toseland I thought so! I'd spotted your name on other threads and said to myself there must be another Green Knowe fan. @Shelleyjelly80 yes, I think I must re-read them every year too. They're a bit tatty now. I keep meaning to replace them all with hardbacks.

Another couple well worth a read are King of Shadows and Victory by Susan Cooper (who wrote the wonderful The Dark is Rising sequence).

Adult, hmm, `I don't think I've come across anything quite as haunting as the children's time slip novels. I liked Robert Silverberg's Up the Line and The Time Hoppers but they are science fiction. And I quite enjoyed the first Diana Gabaldon Cross Stitch - only the every cough and splutter sex by numbers got very dull.

Thank you @zen1 for the link. Nice to have some more to investigate.

I wish I hadn't clicked on this thread. Can't bring myself to pay £60+ for the Come Back Lucy book but I've bought the dvd.. and countless Helen Cresswells that I realised I didn't have. Thanks OP!

My favourite time-slip book is Time to Go Back by Mabel Esther Allen. Used to re-read over and over as a child.

It has to be Polly Flint because I have read practically every other book on this thread repeatedly but not that one- I love timeslip books so much.

Can I recommend the Sterkarm books by Susan Price? They are something else and so well done.

Sorry for triggering a book splurge LyingWitchInTheWardrobe Helen Cresswell wrote a surprisingly large number of books. I remember Moondial and the Bagthorpe Saga but didn't realise she wrote Lizzie Dripping. There's probably a lot more of hers I read as a child without noticing or remembering who wrote them.

I agree CatChant Robert Silverberg's Up the Line is a good science fiction novel (don't think I've read Time Hoppers) but it's definitely time travel not time slip. It doesn't have the same magical quality of, say, Penelope in A Traveller in Time just opening a door onto the past.

The House on the Strand is sort of an adult time slip novel.

One that I love but no one else seems to know is Jason Bodger and the Priory Ghost by Gene Kemp. Boy on school trip to old priory meets girl nun.

Children’s books used to be brilliant didn’t they?

The house in Norham Gardens isn’t fully time slippy but a bit

Come Back Lucy is over £60 these days! I knew the sequel Lucy Beware (which I've never tracked down at an affordable price) went for really silly money but I didn't know that Come Back Lucy did. Ouch. I wish some nice publisher would reprint them both.

I loved Lizzie Dripping too. Both the books and the TV series. Tina Heath, who went on to be a Blue Peter presenter, played Lizzie very well, only she was quite clearly a young woman despite the child's clothes and Lizzie was only supposed to be about 12.

Anyone remember Helen Cresswell's Jumbo Spencer? When I read Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman's Good Omens I was certain Adam and his gang The Them were inspired by Jumbo, Mike, Freckles and Maggot.

Elizabeth Goudge's children's books have a haunting quality even though they're not time-slip stories as far as I remember. But I think if you're a fan of the titles in this thread you'd probably enjoy them. The ones I can think of off the top of my head are The Little White Horse, Linnets and Valerians and Henrietta's House.

Thanks for starting the thread TheIncredibleBookEatingManchot It's been very enjoyable harking back and finding out about novels I hadn't heard of before.

Charlotte Sometimes is one of my favourite books! I'd forgotten "A Stitch In Time" too.

RudeAF Could The Princess in the Pigpen be the one you were thinking of? I found it on the list Zen1 linked to above.
www.goodreads.com/book/show/1353560.The_Princess_in_the_Pigpen

CatChant I love Linnets and Valerians. So beautiful and magical. I still harbour a longing to keep bees since reading it.

This is such a lovely thread. I am going to dig out my Green Knowe books tomorrow.

@CatChant is your name a Diana Wynne Jones homage? I love the Chrestomanci books so much!

Linnets and Valerians is lovely. I think it was republished recently under a really boring title like the Runaways.
I love Smokey House of hers too.

I think I read one called “echoes of Louisa” which was a time slip thing. And The Ghost of Clifden Hall. Properly scary.

‘They do things differently there’ by jan Mark is worth a read, it’s stayed with me since I first read it, brilliant.

For my fellow time slip fans, I just remembered another one - it's called "Follow Me Down" (I can't remember who by) that I enjoyed.

Not really time slip but in the same vein is Red Shift by Alan Garner. A very strange and haunting book.

@AlbertCampion

This is such a lovely thread. I am going to dig out my Green Knowe books tomorrow.

@CatChant is your name a Diana Wynne Jones homage? I love the Chrestomanci books so much!

@AlbertCampion, yes my MN name is Diana Wynne Jones inspired. Oh and I like Margery Allingham too.

Charmed Life was the first DWJ I read (a treat after an unpleasant trip to the dentist when I was a child) and it's been read and re-read so many times that I really know it by heart.

Mind you, I think you could say that about all my DWJs. She had so much imagination and she was a mistress of the unexpected. When you opened a DWJ for the first time you had no idea where it was going to take you. She was wonderful. DD and I were very sad when she died.

I was quite tempted to call DS Cat actually...Only it might have been rather confusing with all the real cats we have...

What a fab thread! Have you all read ‘Frozen in Time’ by Ali Sparkes? A more recent timey wimey book than some of these but just brilliant!