Then an odd and exotic new creature, a turtledove, is brought into the house, and the mousewife is fascinated. But what? Her husband, for one, can’t imagine. The house of Miss Barbara Wilkinson, where the Mouses make their home, is a nice house and the mousewife is for the most part happy with her lot-and yet she yearns for something more. ‘Day in and day out the dutiful mousewife works alongside her mousehusband. Here are summertime and out of doors and make believe all woven into a story of exceptional beauty.’ Solved, it put the happiest possible ending to a story already bursting with all the things children love. Mother sent ‘rations’ from ‘the wreck’ which was the name they gave the house beyond the orchard David discovered a cave Winkie, who still believed in fairies, caught a glimpse of a dryad (with freckles) and a pleasant, shivery mystery hung over the island from the very beginning. So here the four young Guthries were, ‘cast away on a desert island’ which they promptly named Invisible. Right in the middle of the wooded acres surrounding their new home up in Connecticut! On one side was the pond, on another a wide brook, and running from that to the pond, another, narrower brook.

‘When the Gutheries moved from a New York apartment to the country the three children found that they not only had a lovely brook that ran into a lake, but more exciting yet, they had a real island. The Lady of the Linden Tree by Barbara Leonie Picard This was more than Gundula, who each year painted the most beautiful eggs for Easter, could stand.’Ĥ.

It was unheard of that the songbirds which had always been welcomed back by the townspeople each spring were now being caught in nets by the Mayor and his friends, and the Mayor had actually forbidden the sale of Easter eggs. And Anemone and her dog, Winnie, ran away from home – driven to it by the mean housekeeper and her horrid son who had made life miserable for Anemone since Father befriended and took them in.Įven Aunt Gundula, a remarkable woman, who had been Anemone’s mother’s dearest friend and with whom Anemone took refuge, couldn’t, at first, understand why things in the town were in such upheaval. The mayor dismissed three of the town’s most respected councilors, blaming them for the disappearance. One of the cathedral statues of a foolish virgin disappeared, and also the figure of the gargoyle that spouted above it. But strange and disturbing things began to happen. ‘Life in the old cathedral town of Vogelsang had gone on peacefully for many years, and life for Anemone and her father had always been a happy one.

The diddakoi by rumer godden