Book description
'I could get in,' Marianne thought, 'if there was a person inside the house. There has got to be a person. I can't get in unless there is somebody there. 'Why isn't there someone in the house?' she cried to the empty world around her. Marianne is no child prodigy…
Why read it?
2 authors picked Marianne Dreams as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
What one reads as a child often makes a powerful impact. While not exactly a haunted house novel, I first encountered this tale of a bedridden young girl who finds that she dreams of what she draws (with a magic pencil) through the legendarily creepy 1972 adaptation, Escape into Night, (of which only black and white videotapes remain) and afterward read it and thought it very atmospheric.
Every attempt by Marianne to ‘correct’ her defective artwork somehow makes the situation more nightmarish, and the house she initially draws is particularly disturbing in the way naïve drawings can be, as…
From John's list on spooky old houses and the fear of madness.
A survival book list should definitely contain at least one treasure from your childhood. This one never left me and it’s a book I return to for its haunting, beautiful, disturbing depiction of Marianne, the little girl who dreams what she draws. Battling against a mysterious, unnamed illness, she escapes from the daily monotony by drawing a house, and a boy, and some sentinel stones. Slowly, this dreamworld becomes her reality. As the children struggle to break out of their house, surrounded by them, the stony watchers, the reader is dimly aware that it mirrors their fight to recover…
From Olivia's list on to survive desert islands, life, and everything.
If you love Marianne Dreams...
These Blue Mountains
A moving story of love, betrayal, and the enduring power of hope in the face of darkness.
German pianist Hedda Schlagel's world collapsed when her fiancé, Fritz, vanished after being sent to an enemy alien camp in the United States during the Great War. Fifteen years later, in 1932, Hedda…
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