The Night Garden
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
From Newbery Honor--and National Book Award--winning author Polly Horvath, a magical middle grade novel that features a garden that grants wishes.
It is World War II and Franny Whitekraft lives with her parents, Sina and Old Tom, on a farm on Vancouver Island. Their peaceful life is interrupted when their neighbor, Crying Alice, begs Sina to watch her children while she goes to visit her husband at the military base where he is stationed because she suspects he's up to no good. Soon after the children move in, letters start to arrive from their father and they don't understand what they mean until it is too late to stop him from doing something that threatens to change their whole lives. Can the ancient, forbidden night garden that supposedly grants everyone one wish help? And if it does, at what cost?
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
The witty voice of 12-year-old Franny drives this historical adventure, set during WWII in the coastal town of Sooke in British Columbia. Adopted through a "series of mistakes," aspiring writer Franny lives with a sculptor named Sina and her husband, Old Tom, in a grand, rambling house with extensive gardens (including the off-limits "night garden," which possesses magical properties) until the war intrudes on their peace. When a dramatically weepy neighbor, nicknamed Crying Alice, needs someone to care for her children, Sina takes in the energetic Winifred, Wilfred, and Zebediah, then adds a supremely untalented and grubby neighbor, Gladys, as a cook. Amid the chaos of the household, Sina sees UFOs, a hermit makes himself useful, a mystery involving Crying Alice's husband and a spy plane emerges, and the night garden reveals its powers of wish fulfillment. While the narrative sometimes gets lost in complicated plot turns, the quirky characters and Franny's dry-humored narration stand out as Horvath invokes classic literary elements of orphans, secret gardens, and found families. Ages 9 12.
