The Night Garden - Hardcover

Horvath, Polly

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374304521 ISBN 13: 9780374304522

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR), 2017

Synopsis

From Newbery Honor and National Book Award–winning author Polly Horvath is this magical middle-grade novel about a garden that grants wishes. It is World War II, and Franny and her parents, Sina and Old Tom, enjoy a quiet life on a farm on Vancouver Island. Franny writes, Sina sculpts, and Old Tom tends to their many gardens―including the ancient, mysterious night garden. 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 because she suspects he’s up to no good. Soon after the children move in, letters arrive from their father that suggest he's about to do something to change their lives; and appearances from a stubborn young cook, UFOs, hermits, and ghosts only make life stranger. Can the forbidden night garden that supposedly grants everyone one wish help them all out of trouble? And if so, at what cost? The Night Garden is a poignant and hilarious story from acclaimed children's author Polly Horvath.

About this title

About the Author:

Polly Horvath has written many books for children and young adults, among them Everything on a Waffle, The Canning Season, and One Year in Coal Harbor. She has won numerous awards including a National Book Award, Newbery Honor, Toronto Dominion Award, International White Raven, and Canadian Library Association's Young Adult Book of the Year. She has also been short-listed for Germany's most prestigious literature award, the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, as well as the Writer's Trust Vicky Metcalfe Award for her body of work and many others. Her books have been New York Times and Publishers Weeklybestsellers and Rosie O'Donnell and Oprah picks. She is translated into over 25 languages and her books are taught in children's literature curricula in North America and internationally. She lives in British Columbia.

From School Library Journal:

Gr 4–6—World War II hasn't affected 12-year-old Franny's rustic, idyllic life on Vancouver Island, BC. While her mother Sina sculpts, she writes and explores the many gardens tended by her father, Old Tom. But there is one garden he forbids Franny to enter: the ancient night garden. Legend says that a person can make one wish while in the night garden and it will come true, but that wish cannot be undone. Contented Franny has little interest in wishes until the family's peace is disrupted: a neighbor suddenly leaves her three children with Sina while she goes off to prevent her husband, a mechanic who works on top-secret military planes, from doing "something terrible." The neighbor kids and Franny become embroiled in the mystery surrounding the mechanic when letters from him arrive containing ominous clues to his intent. The children see the night garden as their only chance to help, so they defy Old Tom and test the garden's legend. Franny's first-person narration, rich with droll insights, balances the plot's tension and reveals her awareness of the extraordinary magic that envelops her farm, "alive and breathing with suppressed something." National Book Award winner Horvath writes with accessible eloquence, making what would be fantastical in another setting quite plausible on this island populated with whimsical, winsome characters. VERDICT Thoughtful, hilarious, and moving; repeated readings reveal even more to appreciate in this superbly crafted tale. An essential purchase for all middle grade collections.—Marybeth Kozikowski, Sachem Public Library, Holbrook, NY

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0374304521
• ISBN 13: 9780374304522
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 304