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''Tom's Midnight Garden'' is a low fantasy novel for children by Philippa Pearce, first published in 1958 by Oxford with illustrations by Susan Einzig. It has been reissued in print many times and also adapted for radio, television, the cinema, and the stage. The main character Tom is a modern boy living under quarantine with his aunt and uncle in a 1950s city apartment building that was a country house during the 1880s–1890s. At night he slips to the old garden where he finds a girl playmate in the past. Pearce won the annual Carnegie Medal from the Library Association, recognising the year's outstanding children's book by a British subject.〔 For the 70th anniversary celebration in 2007, a panel named it one of the top ten Medal-winning works〔 and the British public elected it the nation's second-favourite.〔 ==Plot summary== When Tom Long's brother Peter gets measles, Tom is sent to stay with his Uncle Alan and Aunt Gwen. They live in an upstairs flat of a big house with no garden, only a tiny yard for parking. The elderly and reclusive landlady, Mrs Bartholomew, lives above them. Because Tom may be infectious, he is not allowed out to play, and he feels lonely. Without exercise he is less sleepy, and awake after midnight, when he hears the communal grandfather clock strangely strike 13. He gets up to investigate and discovers that the back door now opens on a large sunlit garden. Every night the clock strikes 13 and Tom returns to the Victorian era grounds. There he meets another lonely child, a girl called Hatty, and they become inseparable playmates. Tom sees the family occasionally, but only Hatty (and as is revealed later in the book, the gardener) sees him and the others believe she plays alone. Tom writes daily accounts to his brother Peter, who follows the adventures during his recovery – and afterward, for Tom contrives to extend the stay with Aunt and Uncle. Gradually at first, Hatty grows up and passes Tom's age; he comes to realise that he is slipping to different points in the past. Finally she grows up at a faster rate, until she is an adult she is courting an acquaintance of hers, Barty. At this stage in the book, the season in the old garden tends to be winter. On the final night before Tom is due to go home, he goes downstairs to find the garden is not there. He desperately tries to run around and find it, but crashes into a set of bins from the present day courtyard, waking up several residents. He shouts Hatty's name in disappointment, before his Uncle Alan finds him and puts the events down to Tom sleepwalking. The following morning, Mrs Bartholomew summons Tom to apologise, only to reveal herself as Hatty, having made the link when she heard him call her name. The events Tom experienced were real in Hatty's past; he has stepped into them by going into the garden at the times she dreamt of them. On the final night, she had instead been dreaming of her wedding with Barty. After taking Tom home, Aunt Gwen comments on the strange way that Tom had said goodbye to Mrs Bartholomew when he left: he hugged her, as if she were a little girl. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Tom's Midnight Garden」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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