A welcome reissue of an original and highly imaginative classic. Marianne is stuck in bed for six weeks following an illness. Seemingly with nothing to do, she is sure she’ll be terribly bored. But then she finds a special pencil in an old workbox she is sorting through and begins to draw. Soon Marianne finds that whatever she draws appears in her dreams and, excitingly if slightly frighteningly, the people and places begin to come alive. Soon Marianne has a whole new world and Mark, a special friend to play with.
'I could get in,' Marianne thought, 'if there was a person inside the house. There has got to be a person. I can't get in unless there is somebody there.'A powerful and haunting classic about a girl haunted by her own dreams.Ill and bored with having to stay in bed, Marianne picks up a pencil and starts doodling - a house, a garden, a boy at the window. That night she has an extraordinary dream. She is transported into her own picture, and as she explores further she soon realises she is not alone. The boy at the window is called Mark, and his every movement is guarded by the menacing stone watchers that surround the solitary house. Together, in their dreams, Marianne and Mark must save themselves . . .The perfect gift for children aged 8+, this well-loved classic will delight a new generation of readers of the Faber Children's Classics list.
Catherine Storr (1913-2001) was an English children's writer, best known for her novel Marianne Dreams and for the Clever Polly series. She was born in London, and attended St Paul's Girls' School, and went on to study English literature at Newnham College, Cambridge. She tried unsuccessfully to become a novelist but without giving up this ambition she studied medicine, qualifying as a doctor in 1944. She worked at the Middlesex Hospital. Afterwards, while regularly producing new children's books, she also worked as an editorial assistant for Penguin Books, from 1966 to the early seventies. She married in 1942 and had had three daughters. She divorced in 1970 and remarried the economist Lord Balogh (1905-1985).
You can read Julia Eccleshare's obituary to Catherine Storr here.
