Set in a beautiful and magical place, this is an award-winning classic story of a friendship that stretches across centuries as Tolly, newly arrived at Green Knowe, his great grandmother’s old wonderfully atmospheric house, makes friends with Alexander, Toby and Linnet, his long distant relatives who lived in the house centuries before. Although from another time, Tolly’s relatives are not ghosts; they and Tolly share a home and, through the stories of long-ago that Tolly’s grandmother tells him, Tolly knows all about their lives while they can visit him in his. Together the children have wonderful adventures in the surrounding countryside. Further adventures set in the same wonderful house but now occupied by other children follow in The River at Greene Knowe.
These enchanting, haunting stories from Carnegie winner Lucy M. Boston have become modern classics, beautifully evoking all the magic and wonder of childhood. Now The Children of Green Knowe and River at Green Knowe are available in one edition.
The Children of Green Knowe Tolly’s Great Grandmother isn’t a witch, but both she and her old house, Green Knowe, are full of a very special kind of magic. There are other children in the house – children who were happy there centuries before. Running around Green Knowe’s moat, gardens and mysterious rooms, Tolly slowly discovers these children, along with their toys, animals, and their wonderful stories.
The River at Green Knowe ‘What a lot of islands the river makes,’ said Ida. ‘We must go exploring and sail around them all.’ And so begins a wonderful, magical summer. Ida, Oscar and Ping are staying with Ida’s great-aunt at the ancient, river-encircled house of Green Knowe. They set out to chart the river in their canoe, and soon discover that it hides some surprising and mysterious secrets.
Lucy Boston was born in 1892 in Southport, Lancashire, one of six children. She went to a Quaker school in Surrey, and was married in 1917. She later moved to a beautiful manor house near Cambridge which provided the setting for her Green Knowe stories. She started writing at the age of sixty and won the Carnegie Medal for A Stranger of Green Knowe in 1961. Her books are illustrated by her son, Peter. Lucy Boston died in 1990.
