ADE ADEPITAN:
I'm reading Tom's Midnight Garden. What a fantastic book. Here's Tom. Now, Tom's staying at his aunt and uncle's flat. He's lonely, he's bored, and right now, he's lying awake in the middle of the night stuck listening to the crazy old grandfather's clock downstairs, striking all the wrong hours as usual.
ADE ADEPITAN:
"11. 12. 'Fancy striking midnight twice in one night,' jeered Tom, sleepily. 13, proclaimed the clock and then stopped striking. 13. Tom's mind gave a jerk. Had it really struck 13?" Of course, there is no such time as 13. Is there?
ADE ADEPITAN:
"The stillness had become an expectant one. The house seemed to hold its breath. The darkness pressed up to him, pressing him with a question, 'Come on, Tom, the clock has struck 13.' 'What are you going to do about it?"
ADE ADEPITAN:
I'll tell you what Tom did about it. He rushes downstairs and he checks the grandfather's clock, and whilst he does this, he opens a door that he's never bothered with before. And why would he? It just leads out to a small yard full of rubbish and bins.
ADE ADEPITAN:
But not tonight. Tonight, that door opens into a garden. A huge, beautiful garden, the type that's full of trees to climb, places to explore, adventures to have around every corner.
ADE ADEPITAN:
And now, that garden's Tom's to visit every single night. But only when the time was exactly right.
ADE ADEPITAN:
I loved this book when I first read it. And I suppose I was a little bit like Tom, you know, always looking for adventures, easily bored. Tom had to keep this book a secret, I'm not sure if I could have done that. I really would have wanted to show off the garden to my friends.
ADE ADEPITAN:
It's amazing how the writer describes all the adventures in the garden in so much detail.
ADE ADEPITAN:
It's like you get to know the garden as well as Tom does. It's like it's your own personal place, and I wouldn't mind that. Ade's Midnight Garden. How cool would that be? Tom gets frustrated because he can't open any of the doors in the Midnight Garden. But he's not going to let that stop him.
ADE ADEPITAN:
He tries pushing hard against one of the solid wooden doors. Now, if he can't open it, Tom's going to try going through it! "At first, the body came through evenly from top to bottom. Then, the upper part seemed to stop, and the bottom part came through in its entirety, legs first. Then one arm came through, then another.
ADE ADEPITAN:
Finally, everything was through except the head. The truth was that Tom was now a little lacking courage. The passing through the door of so much of his body had not been without enormous effort and peculiar, if indescribable, sensations. 'I'm just resting a minute,' said Tom's head, on the garden side of the door,
ADE ADEPITAN:
Yet he knew that he was really delaying because he was nervous. His stomach, for instance, had felt most uncomfortable as it passed through the door. What would the experience be like for his head, his eyes, his ears?" Pushing your head through a door? I told you this was an unusual garden.
ADE ADEPITAN:
And here's another puzzler. Night after night, Tom spends hours and hours exploring the garden. But when he hurries back to the flat, it's still only a few minutes past midnight. One night, Tom sees a fir tree fall to the ground in a massive storm.
ADE ADEPITAN:
But the next night, the tree's standing again. So is time going backwards? And if Tom can see other people's footprints in the dew-covered grass, why does his own feet leave no mark at all?
ADE ADEPITAN:
I love reading books that actually make time fly. Have you ever had that? It's such a cool feeling. You know you're so in the world of the book that you don't notice your food going cold, you don't notice it going dark, you actually don't ever want to put the book down.
ADE ADEPITAN:
Time. There's never enough of it for Tom! Not when he wants to figure out the true secrets of the Midnight Garden before he has to go back home again. Why not grab a few magical hours yourself? You could read this amazing book and, like Tom, you could solve the mystery of the Midnight Garden.
