“Marianne had looked forward to her tenth birthday as being something special quite different from any birthday she had yet had, for two reasons.” No, but it has informative drawings that are just as engaging. The drawing (on p.39) of the boy, Mark, lying on the windowseat in the dream house is hauntingly sad. They wonderfully capture the contrast between Marianne’s own drawings, which are so key to the plot, and the ‘reality’ they translate to in Marianne’s dreamworld. These illustrations, unlike the cover, have stayed with me for decades. It just falls flat and captures nothing of the excitement or fear so central to the book. The cover shown here is by Juliet Renny and, even though this has been one of my favourite books since I first read it in about 1970, I’ve never liked this cover (nor any subsequent covers, to be honest). 1958 (Faber & Faber), edition shown is 1964 Puffin paperback.
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