Lucy M. Boston's 1954 middle grade story The Children of Green Knowe is the first of six novels set in and around the fictional Green Knowe, an ancient British manor house (based on and modelled after Boston's own home, on the Manor at Hemingford Grey, which was built in the 1130s and is supposed to be the oldest continually inhabited house in the United Kingdom). And while Green Knowe is of course a fictionalised Hemingford Grey Manor, the in the six novels by the author lovingly and evocativel...

The most beautiful days in life are those that make you forget that you’ve ever left your childhood. It could be a reconnection with an old school friend, a visit to the place that you grew up, a taste, a smell. Or simply rereading or discovering a book like ‘The Children of Green Knowe’ that you grow to love so much that it just becomes a part of you.

Listened to the audiobook while winding wool/yarn. Reminiscent of childhood magical thinking. I loved the descriptive language, the stories and the birds and animals. While I listened I thought back to visits to my grandma's house, which I experienced as a haven of comfort and unconditional love. When he arrives at Green Knowe, Tozeland's great granny greets him warmly and gives him the name of Tolly. She is loving and engaging and puts him at ease. I love the relationship that develops between ...

This is a beautifully written British children's classic, especially appropriate for Christmas time. The author must be highly sensitive, an empath, or both, because the magic of nature was celebrated so perfectly in this. There are so many unnamed bird characters, for example. The chaffinch may be my favorite of all (including the humans!)If you're looking for a gentle read that turns the natural world into a magical place (or rather, reminds us that the natural world IS magical, and we just ne...

4.5 starsA terribly dated and terribly charming story of a small boy's stay with his grandma in a haunted house and his adventures there. I remember reading this as a child and this time I listened on audio. It's quite warm here at the moment and the narrator had a very plummy British accent with received pronounciation which was actually quite embarrassing when I had to slow the car near pedestrians, and they could hear it through my open window!Generations of the same family and gamekeepers ha...

We reread our favourite book of all time in the lead up to Christmas and finished it today. This book is a delight to read aloud, the poetic descriptions, conversations, stories by the fire, interspersed with excerpts of carols make it a magical story to read aloud yourself by your fire just as Tolly and Grandmother Oldknow do themselves by theirs.Tolly is near enough an orphan, his mother is dead and his father, who has married again is absent from his life. After spending holidays at his board...

In the beginning of Lucy M. Boston's wonderful children's book, The Children of Green Knowe (1954), seven-year-old Toseland (pet name Tolly) travels by train through the flooded British countryside to spend his Christmas holidays with his great-grandmother Mrs. Oldknow in her old castle-like house Green Noah (true name Green Knowe). Tolly is a lonely and imaginative boy, Mrs. Oldknow a solitary and imaginative old lady, and they hit it off immediately, encouraging each other's fancies and treati...

Remember when you were young and wished the universe you created around the dull things surrounding you weren't completely ignored by your parents? That you could pretend that even your appartment is a place where things might actually happen, as if in a castle. When I was little I was told that there used to be a graveyard before they made the flats we live in. I was convinced of it for a while because of a big white cross placed in the nearby and certainly because spooky is way better than bor...

This is that rarest of all things, a perfect book. It is a beautifully told story about a little boy who's sent to live with his grandmother in a very rural England. He moves into a vast old house, complete with whimsical topiary, an empty stable, a river, and - ghosts. It's obvious that that's what Tolly's strange new playmates are, at least to us, but they seem as alive as anyone else in the story, which moves seamlessly from present to past to present again, using the medium of the grandmothe...

One night when I was a teenager I heard my mother go into my younger sister's room because she was crying. Turns out the book she was reading scared her, which of course piqued my interest. It was The Children of Green Knowe, and it didn't scare me, and I loved it. I always meant to read the rest of the series but never did. Now they've been reissued with Brett Helquist covers. I must get the whole series and read them all!