Marianne Dreams

[Beachtastic]

Did anyone else love this book as a child?

For some reason I've been thinking about it the past couple of days and will read it again (paperback on order!).

Such a clever and interesting plot. Not to mention scary!

annabookbel.net/revisiting-childrens-classic-1958-marianne-dreams-catherine-storr/

Yes, it was read to us at school and I still sometimes think about it.

Yes, it was one of my favourite books and I found it really haunting. The rocks with eyes were truly terrifying! My other favourites were Charlotte Sometimes and When Marnie was There. All have a supernatural theme. I still love a good spooky read as an adult.

Yes I loved it. I haven’t read it since seeing the movie though.

Loved it lots, and found my old copy when clearing my parents’ home, read it again, and enjoyed it again, unlike some childhood books - it is excellent.

I did too. A lovely mixture of dreamy and creepy, with a hopeful end.

Did you know there was a sequel called Marianne and Mark? I read it some years ago and didn't enjoy it very much, though can't remember much about it.

No, I didn't know that! It sounds suspiciously as though they might be older and have some sort of weird teenage romance 😖🫣

@Sheeppig I haven't read When Marnie was There but I loved the Studio Ghibli film of it 🤩

“Not the light!”

Wonderfully eerie, haunting novel. The rocks with eyes were very creepy.

I’ve looked for Marianne and Mark over the years but never come across a copy. The same with Come Back Lucy by Pamela Sykes, a time slip/ghost story set in the 1970s, which also has a rare sequel, Lucy Beware, that I’ve never tracked down.

I also love Charlotte Sometimes, The Ghosts (also published as The Amazing Mr Blunden), Tom’s Midnight Garden, When Marnie Was There and A Traveller in Time.

Marianne Dreams was one of my favourite books. I must have read it dozens of times. I also loved Tom's Midnight Garden and Charlotte Sometimes (another one that I reread endlessly). Moondial and A Wrinkle in Time were great, too.

And I LOVE Diana Wynne Jones, @CatChant

I LOVED this book as a child. Takes me back

There are two books linked to Charlotte Sometimes too - Emma in Winter about her younger sister, and The Summer Birds set before Charlotte goes to school. Neither as good!

My favourite book as a child, loved it

Loved it and really loved Charlotte Sometimes. It was such a great illustration of wartime.

Marianne and Mark is AWFUL. A hideous snobbish disaster of a book. Probably interesting from a sociological point of view in terms of what people thought teenage/YA fiction should be back then. But not reading it is a positive choice (see also: All Change by Elizabeth Jane Howard).

I adored this when I was 7 or 8. Read it over and over again.

It was thanks to Studio Ghibli that When Marnie Was There was reprinted and I could finally get hold of a copy. Nearly all my childhood books were borrowed from the library as books were expensive back then so there are several childhood favourites I have had to buy as an adult.

I’m like you @Sheeppig hardly remember everything I’ve ever read, it was all borrowed

Oh wow, I adore this book and have recently read it to my 9 year old!

Loved this book, read it when I was about 10 or 11. The film adaptation is called “Paperhouse” and freaked me out as a kid

I loved Charlotte Sometimes and never managed to track the others down.

I was also really bemused after buying an edition to re-read it when I was older, only to discover bits of it that I had remembered didn’t exist in the text. It was only much later on that I discovered on a vintage children’s books discussion that there were actually two published versions, one of which changes the text quite a bit! I was relieved to discover I hadn’t somehow dreamt this all up!

It was dramatised by the BBC in the late 1970s ( guessing the date) My sister and I were terrified by it!
Just looked it up, was actually ITV in 1972 and called Escape into Night.

Marianne Dreams was a favourite childhood book of mine - I still love it. The sequel was very disappointing. I've also read Lucy Beware - another disappointing sequel (to Come Back Lucy).

Long before the film Paperhouse, Marianne Dreams was filmed as a six part serial in 1972, with the title Escape into Night. Available on Youtube. Filmed partly in black and white, it is hugely atmospheric and very faithful to the book; I found it genuinely scary as a child but very compelling.

LOVED it. I'm going to rebuy, thanks for the reminder!

It was a big fave in my house growing up. I still have the copy I had in the 1980s. And I named my daughter Marianne!

Yes, one of my all time favourites, alongside 'Tom's Midnight Garden'. I've managed to find copies of both as an adult, alongside another favourite, 'When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit'. The rocks with eyes were horrifically scary as a child and still creepy as an adult.

Seconding the advice not to bother with 'Marianne & Mark', though. I have that too, but it's not a patch on 'Marianne Dreams'. But would thoroughly recommend Catherine Storr's other stories about 'Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf', which used to have my mum and me in stitches.