The Night Garden

By Polly Horvath

From Newbery Honor--and National Book Award--winning author Polly Horvath, a magical middle grade novel that features a garden that grants wishes.

It is World War II and Franny Whitekraft lives with her parents, Sina and Old Tom, on a farm on Vancouver Island. Their peaceful life is interrupted when their neighbor, Crying Alice, begs Sina to watch her children while she goes to visit her husband at the military base where he is stationed because she suspects he's up to no good. Soon after the children move in, letters start to arrive from their father and they don't understand what they mean until it is too late to stop him from doing something that threatens to change their whole lives. Can the ancient, forbidden night garden that supposedly grants everyone one wish help? And if it does, at what cost?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Penguin Group
• Release date: Sep 12, 2017
• ISBN: 9780143198598

Polly Horvath

Polly Horvath has written many books for children and young adults, among them Everything on a Waffle, The Canning Season, and One Year in Coal Harbour. She has won numerous awards including a National Book Award, Newbery Honor, Toronto Dominion Award, International White Raven, and Canadian Library Association's Young Adult Book of the Year. She has also been short-listed for Germany's most prestigious literature award, the Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis, as well as the Writer's Trust Vicky Metcalfe Award for her body of work and many others. Her books have been New York Times and Publishers Weekly bestsellers and Rosie O'Donnell and Oprah picks. She is translated into over 25 languages and her books are taught in children's literature curricula in North America and internationally. She lives in British Columbia.

Reviews for The Night Garden

[davidpwhelan_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"The Night Garden" is the least visited and most mysterious garden on the land on which Franny's family lives. It plays a key role after three children come to stay at the farm and a mystery arises that may be a key to a calamity facing their father.The writing is solid and uses a rich vocabulary. The story was harder for me to get into. It reminded me a bit of a weak version of Anne of Green Gables crossed with a weak version of Lemony Snicket. On the one hand, the vocabulary and some of the philosophical bits seem aimed for an older reader. But the implausibility of the plot seems aimed at younger readers who can overlook the holes in this literal flight of fancy.I would love to have seen Franny developed more, without the need for a mystery beyond the garden itself, whose own backstory is quite interesting. Parallel arcs, like the incorporation of technology into rural life, ended up feeling like a distraction by the story's end.The story has a dash of magic and of mystery. But I'm not sure I'd call the book either, which could make it a hard recommendation for a young reader except to say that it's unusual. My guess is that it's aimed at 4th or 5th grade up to 7th or 8th grade, but it's mishmash approach may make it too challenging at the younger end and not be developed enough at the older end.