Marianne had been having lessons with Miss Chesterfield, a tutor who gave lessons to sick children in their own homes and she realised that Mark was another pupil Miss Chesterfield had told her about, who had polio. he tells her that he has trapped, because he has been ill and he can’t use his legs properly. That night’s dream makes her realise that she needs to add stairs, and when she has added those she meets Mark. The next day she goes back to her drawing, and she adds a door handle, and a boy looking out of an upstairs window. She adds that the next day, and after the next night’s dream she adds a staircase, so that she can go upstairs to meet the boy she drew looking out of a window. She goes to the door but she finds that she can’t get in, because she didn’t draw a door knob. When she falls asleep she dreams that she is standing outside the house she drew. She draws a house, with a garden, set in rough moorland. Bored, she starts to draw to pass the time, using an old pencil she found in her grandmother’s workbox. Marianne is confined to bed with an illness that will keep her their for several months. It was lovely, it was spooky, and it was the kind of book that brought out the child who loved books inside me. Catherine Storr’s 1958 novel Marianne Dreams is one of those classic children’s stories that passed me by, but luckily I spotted a Puffin copy from the 1970s, I picked it up, I thought it looked lovely, and so I brought it home.
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