Unwrapping from The New York Review Children's Collection...
Authored by Alison Uttley
Illustrated by Phyllis Bray
Ages 10-14
Unwrapping some images from the book...
About the book...
Penelope Taberner Cameron is a frail little girl who loves to read and to dream. Because of her ill health and the fact that she is relying far too much on her imagination for companionship and entertainment her concerned mother decides to ship her and her siblings off from London to her aunt and uncle's farm where hopefully she will gain her strength back and get a new perspective on life.
The children are warmly greeted by those who reside at Thackers, an historical farm estate which is totally self-contained and extremely isolated. It is located in Derbyshire.
Once there, Penelope finds herself entangled in the world of time travel...being able to transport herself from the present time back into Elizabethan times. Penelope assimilates with the family she encounters there and knows the dangers they are in as they plan to free Mary, Queen of Scots, from the location in which she is incarcerated, due to the edict of the reigning Queen, Queen Elizabeth.
Penelope knows how the tragic story ends regarding the Scottish queen but is incapable of changing history or persuading her new family of the hopelessness of their noble cause.... to free Mary, Queen of Scots.
This story will delight all ages and the characters penned are so convincing, the plot so enthralling, and the descriptions of 16th century life so very vivid you will be engaged in the story from the very first page right until the last word. Beautifully written with flowing descriptive language this lovely book is a keeper. A book you will definitely want to add to your classic collection.
What others are saying...
A superb novel about a modern girl who finds herself in Renaissance England trying to save Mary, Queen of Scots.
—Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
A beautiful book...a form of enchanting ghost story, with the ghosts drawn in with the grace of a painter on a fan.
—The Observer
Mrs. Uttley writes with a delicate, richly imaginative touch, but always right at the level of a little child’s understanding and interest.
—Books and Bookmen
About the author...
Alison Uttley (1884–1976) was born Alice Jane Taylor in Derbyshire, England, into a tenant-farming family that had lived on the same land for two hundred years. Uttley would return to the Derbyshire landscape and the house she grew up in, Castle Top Farm, in many of her books, including A Traveller in Time. A bright scholarship student throughout her childhood, Uttley went on to Manchester University, and in 1906 became the second female student to graduate with honors in physics from the university. Marriage and motherhood put an end to her teaching career, and it was only after her son, John, began school that she published her first book, The Squirrel, the Hare and the Little Grey Rabbit (1929). Uttley’s husband died the next year, and she began publishing books at a rapid rate in order to support herself and her son. Among her works are naturalistic novels of youth, adventure tales, and a cookbook, as well as books that grew out of her belief in enchantment, time travel, and the supernatural. By the end of her life, Uttley had written some one hundred books of fiction and nonfiction, including thirty in the Little Grey Rabbit series, and become one of twentieth-century Britain’s most popular children’s writers.
Read on and read always!
It's a wrap.
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