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! I borrowed it from the library and found it so weird but brilliant. A couple of years later I tried to remember what the book was and couldn't tell if I was remembering a dream or an actual book! Then I found the book in the library again and rediscovered it all over again. It still comes to mind decades later.

Jan Pienkowski is probably my favourite ever illustrator and I can’t separate my love for the Joan Aiken stories from the beautiful silhouettes of his art. Every time I look at a dark tree against the sky or a lake I think of these pictures! And to do the beautiful complexity of these, then the gorgeous simplicity of the Meg and Mog ones, is so brilliant.

I really liked Alan Garner, especially the Weirdstone and the other books set around the edge. But Owl Service deeply disturbed me for some reason. Maybe I was a bit too young when I read it... It's not explicit at all and doesn't contain any subject matter that's unsuitable for children. It's just so intense in a way that's unusual for a children's book.

Years later I read a collection of essays by Alan Garner (would highly recommend) and he talks in there about having a nervous breakdown while filming an adaptation of the book. It's really interesting seeing his perspective on the stories he wrote

Did anyone read the Heartsease children's series? It's where there's a spell on the whole of the UK so people regress back to the Medieval times/associate all technology with witchcraft. I sort of categorise it with the Marianne dreams, Weirdstone of Brisingamen and Dark is Rising books. I think the category might just be "really good books" though.

I had The Wheel on the School!

And Marianne and Mark, and The Chinese Egg - although I didn’t read Marianne Dreams till much later.

Loved lots of the authors and books mentioned above.

I’ll add Margaret Mahy and Nicholas Fisk to the list of supernatural/magical children’s authors I remember. And Jenny Nimmo.

Also loved the historical ones - Cynthia Harnett and Rosemary Sutcliff - and I’ll add Leon Garfield whose books were a bit darker and grittier.

I didn’t like A Wrinkle in Time, not sure why, possibly as I first read it as an adult.

I adored Joan Aiken’s stories. I loved that the parents were often involved rather than always absent as in earlier children’s books. I can never remember the actual title but the story about Mark’s weather ship has influenced my whole concept of my own life. The Serial Garden is amazing too. I feel as if none of them are really filmable - they’re much more like dreams, where the most fantastic events and coincidences are things you barely even notice, you just know they’ve happened.

Margaret Mahy! I had forgotten her. I had some of her short stories. There was one about a leaf that became a dog, I think. I loved that one.

Agree that The Owl Service is quite unsettling. I think that's why I liked it! It seemed to be talking about things that were a lot stranger and darker than most children's books.

Escape into the night is on youtube.

Scary! Even though kids tv

I really liked Aliens in the Family!

I think I read Marianne Dreams when I was around 10 or 11. I found it terrifying - the stones with eyes, didn’t they come nearer and nearer to the house? Probably the most frightening children’s book I ever read.

Joan Aiken was much more gentle, domesticated magic. I never forgot the Serial Garden, and probably, as a child, fantasised about finding the way into it myself!

I loved When Marnie Was There. Such a wonderful story

I also liked Charlotte Sometimes - there was a band in the 90s called that as well

@pollyhemlock Oh yes, the message Aquila sends to the sister he will never be able to see again because fate has washed them up on opposing sides, brings a lump to my throat every time I read The Lantern Bearers:

“Ask her if she remembers the terrace steps under the damson tree at home. Ask her if she remembers the talk we had there once, about Odysseus coming home. Say to her - as though it were I who spoke through you, ‘ “Look, I’ve a dolphin on my shoulder. I’m your long-lost brother.”

Gulp…

@Beachtastic If Catherine Storr didn’t like the ending of Paperhouse then I am in very good company indeed! I would like to see it again though, and Escape into Night too.

@persephonia Peter Dickinson’s The Changes trilogy - The Weathermonger, Heartsease and The Devil’s Children - is another series I read and loved after having the wits scared out of me by catching a few glimpses of the television adaptation. I think 1970s TV companies must have specialised in dramatising children’s novels guaranteed to send their audiences scuttling behind the sofa. The Owl Service was another one. If we’d had the dinner service that inspired Alan Garner I’d never have been able to eat a mouthful from it (I’d love to have it now!).

@SwallowsandAmazonians and @minipie as fellow The Wheel on the School fans, have you read The House of Sixty Fathers, also by Meindert DeJong? It’s about a little boy separated from his parents during the Japanese invasion of China and how, all alone except for the family’s piglet, he sets out to search for them. It’s so real, so harrowing, so heartwarming, and another that will leave you damp-eyed every time.

I loved Leon Garfield too, especially Smith and Devil in the Fog. That man could dance with language and he was a genius at conjuring up atmosphere.

One of the nicest things about threads like these, apart from yattering along with like-minded souls, is that they usually throw up other books to discover. Thanks to this thread, I now know The Chinese Egg had a sequel; Vicky. So that is now on the ‘to look for list’. And I have never come across Nicholas Fisk so I look forward ro investigating his titles.

Nicholas Fisk is amazing. A Rag, A Bone and a Hank of Hair was one of my favourite books.

Also, for those who like historical children's fiction, has anyone read The Golden Goblet. I adored this book.

@CatChant You're right, my reading pile is stacking up!

I just looked up The House of Sixty Fathers. Very expensive on Amazon, but it's also available here as a paperback for about a fiver:
www.abebooks.co.uk/book-search/isbn/9780140302769/

The Amazon blurb does say this, which is rather heartbreaking:

The House of Sixty Fathers is based on Meindert DeJong's actual experience. During World War II, Mr. DeJong was official historian for the Chinese-American Composite Wing, which was part of Cbennault's famous Fourteenth Air Force. A young Chinese war orphan, the Tien Pao of this story, was adopted by DeJong's outfit. The boy chose DeJong as his special "father," and the two were devoted to one another.
Mr. DeJong wanted to bring the boy back to the United States with him, but because of legal complications he was unable to do so. However, the men in the outfit left the youngster well provided for when they returned to America. The Communists then took over that section of China, and DeJong has never heard what happened to the boy.

@MonGrainDeSel I’ve not come across The Golden Goblet so that’s another for the list, thank you.

I can’t believe I forgot Penelope Lively’s The Ghost of Thomas Kempe when I was listing my favourite ghost/time slip type stories. Or the same author’s very different but wonderfully clever and funny The Voyage of QV66, which I have been recommending to anyone who will stand still long enough for years!

@Beachtastic I knew Tien Pao was based on a real war orphan ‘adopted’ by DeJong’s unit. But I never knew that DeJong wasn’t allowed to bring him back to the US and that he lost all contact with the child after the Communist takeover. That is truly heartbreaking.

The Ghost of Thomas Kempe is fab. Penelope Lively in general is great. I loved lots of her books.

Loved both of these

I'm reading Rumer Godden's Kingfishers Catch Fire at the moment -- I loved her children's books, so was excited to discover she also wrote for adults! It's hilarious and sinister, and I can see so many of my own weaknesses (naive optimism, impulsive recklessness) in the character of Sophie that I'm half reading it as a moral lesson 🫣

Amazing thread! I loved The Golden Goblet! Also Crown of Violet and the Vikigs Dawn books.

There's another book I remember reading but I don't remember the title, maybe somone does? It was a historical novel abut two girls called Poppy and Atalanta who get involved with the suffragette movement. Atalanta was a particularly memorable character.

@borogovia the book you’re thinking of is Miss Rivers and Miss Bridges by Geraldine Symons, though the second girl is called Pansy not Poppy.

@pollyhemlock Thank you so much - that's the one!

I loved this book as a child but I did not think anyone else had read it.

Another who had never been able to track down "Marianne and Mark".

Anorak tip here: if you look through Dr Seuss's "Oh, The Places You'll Go", the house is there, complete with stones with one eye

Oh!!!!! That's one of my favourite books of all time. There's a wonderful reading of it on YouTube

I don't think it's quite the same stones, but they are VERY similar (at 04:20)!

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I love so many of the books mentioned here - I still have quite a few of them - I have a big collection of children's and YA fiction including some of my childhood books and some replacements, as well as books published later

Marianne Dreams, but perhaps even more the Clever Polly stories - I seem to have acquired Kindle copies that I'd forgotten about
Charlotte Sometimes
Charmed Life (featuring Cat Chant)
Come Back Lucy
Joan Aiken's Wolves of Willoughby Chase series, and also her collections of short stories for children - the ones about the Armitage family - two children's accidental magic adventures - have been collected as The Serial Garden - I bought this in hardback and then Virago also reissued it
Penelope Lively's kids' books
Geraldine Symons - there were apparently 5 books in the series about Pansy and Atalanta - Puffin published 3 - I first read The Workhouse Child and then found out about Miss Rivers and Miss Bridges and Mademoiselle through a friend whose mum was one of our neighbours
A Traveller in Time, and the very different A Country Child by the same author
Leon Garfield
the Green Knowe books
I missed Goodnight Mr Tom as a child though I was about the right age for it when it was first published - over the last few years I've caught up with Michelle Magorian's books, including her series about the Hollis children who get involved in acting - in the last, set in the early 1960s, a girl encounters Joan Littlewood's theatre company including a very young Sheila Hancock.
Rumer Godden's doll stories