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Overview
Familiar
Here are stories of everyday life, as familiar as a piece of rope and
... as haunting as fear: Mike knows that he can't swing over the river on the knotted rope, but with everyone watching him, he has to try. ... as haunting as a stranger: Who is the frightened-looking girl stealing plums from Nicky's grandparents' precious tree?
... as haunting as cruelty: How can Joe escape from his mean cousin Dicky during a family reunion?Haunting
And here are stories with a supernatural twist, as haunting as the eerie whistling from the hill above Burnt House in the middle of the night and
... as familiar as guilt: A boy forgets the mysterious bottle his cousin loaned him, but when he sneaks out at night to retrieve it, the shadowy whistlers close in on him.
... as familiar as loneliness: A ghost who's unbearably lonesome makes his neighbors suffer until a girl with a sense of the absurd shows him how things could be different.
... as familiar as love: The ghost of a boy comes back to save his father from dying in a ferocious storm.
Peopled with vivid, unforgettable characters, this collection of thirty-seven stories is by turns mysterious, humorous, strange, and sad, but it is always familiar, always haunting, and always surprising.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780062044327 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins Publishers |
| Publication date: | 11/02/2010 |
| Sold by: | HARPERCOLLINS |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 400 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
| Age Range: | 8 - 14 Years |
About the Author
Philippa Pearce is the author of many books, several of which are considered classics both in the United States and in her native England. Her award-winning titles include Tom's Midnight Garden, which received the Carnegie Medal and was an ALA Notable Book; The Battle of Bubble and Squeak, which received the Whitbread Award; and Mrs. Cockle's Cat, which received the Kate Greenaway Medal.
Read an Excerpt
Chapter One
The Rope
The rope hung from top to bottom of his dream. The rope hung softly, saying nothing, doing nothing. Then the rope began to swing very softly, very gently, at first only by a hair's breadth from the vertical...Toward him.
Mike could not see the swing of it, but he knew that it was happening.
The rope swung a little wider, a little wider...Toward him.
The rope had no noose at the end of it, but Mike knew it was a hangman's rope, as surely as if the rope had told him so, and he knew it was for him.
The rope swung a little wider, a lot wider...
Wide, wide it swung...Toward him, toward him...
Mike shrieked and woke himself and found that he had only squeaked, after all. He had woken nobody, for he was sleeping alone, downstairs, on the couch in his granny's sitting room. That was because Shirley and his mother were occupying the spare room upstairs, and of course, Gran herself was in her own bedroom.
Thankfully he lay awake, but gradually thankfulness left him. He got out of his couch bed, went to the window, and drew back the curtains to look out at the early-morning weather.
Please, please, let there be rain...or at least a heavy sky that promised — that faithfully promised — rain later.
But the sky was blue and cloudless, and there was sunshine already in Gran's little garden and sunshine on the meadow beyond and on the trees that grew along the riverbank. The river bounded the meadow, and on the far bank several very tall trees grew. One of them was Mike's gallows, his gibbet.
He got back into bed. He didn't sleep again; he didn't want to. He didn'twant the morning's happenings to begin earlier than need be. He dozed, until he had to get up because everybody else was up and about.
At breakfast Shirley said, "Can we go to the rope this morning?"
"Of course," said their grandmother. "You can both swim well, can't you? If necessary, that is. When I was your age — "
It always seemed that Gran had been a bit of a tomboy at their age, a successful tomboy. You could see that Shirley liked to think she resembled her granny in this. Perhaps, thought Mike, she really did.
Their mother-Gran's daughter-in-law, not her daughter-said uneasily, "We're here on such a short visit, and there are other places to go to besides the river and that rope The river was not deep or fast-flowing or even very wide, but it was certainly very muddy. "If either of them fell in..."
Their gran said, "Nonsense! What's a little river water in summer to them, at their age?"
So, altogether, it had to be taken for granted that they would go to the river, to the rope.
And it certainly wasn't going to rain this morning, but oh! Mike thought, it just possibly could in the afternoon. So he must maneuver and contrive. He said, "We can go to the river this morning and to Brown's this afternoon. I expect there'll still be a few comics left." Brown's was the newsagent's in the village.
"Left?" said Shirley. "A few comics left?"
"They go very quickly," said Mike.
"Oh!" said Shirley. Then: "No, let's do Brown's this morning, the rope this afternoon."
"If you say so," said Mike. He also shrugged his shoulders.
Their grandmother had given them money to buy comics, enough money to buy at least one each. When they reached Brown's, Shirley was businesslike in her examining and choosing; Mike mooned around, flipping pages, dissatisfied. Here, in this one, was the kind of story lie usually enjoyed. Mighty-righty — that was the hero's name was tough and fearless. He also had magic powers. In an emergency, he just pressed a button on his chest and little luminous wings sprouted from his shoulders to carry him anywhere. (The wings could be retracted by the same device.) Moreover, if he clenched his right hand once, it became a fist to knock out a champion boxer; twice, and he could knock down trees and walls. (It was possible that he could clench it a third time and so acquire even superior power, but that was only hinted at in the story.)
"I saw you yesterday," said a voice at Mike's elbow. "Yesterday evening. By the river." A ginger-haired boy of about Mike's age, lie sounded friendly.
"Oh," said Mike.
"Have you come to live in one of those houses beyond the meadow?"
"No," said Mike. "Only staying. With our gran. Two days."
"Have you seen the rope?" asked the ginger-haired boy.
"Yes," said Mike.
"We're going there later," said Shirley eagerly.
"See you then," said the ginger-haired boy. He left the shop with a packet of sweets that he had just bought.
Mike put Mighty-righty back on the display shelf. "I don't want any of them," he said. "They're rubbish."
Shirley, not really expecting any luck, asked if she could use Mike's share of the money they had been given, and to her amazement, lie said that she could. He was very quiet as they walked back from Brown's, but Shirley was dipping into her comics as she went and noticed nothing. He was silent over their midday meal with the others, but no one noticed because Gran was hurrying everything today. She wanted the children to have plenty of time by the river, with the rope.
Mike offered to stay and help with the washing up, but his granny told him that she and his mother would do it. He must go off with his sister-no time like the present, for their age. So Mike and Shirley went alone across the meadow, in blazing sunshine, to the river and the trees on the riverbank.
There it hung: the rope...
Familiar and Haunting. Copyright © by Philippa Pearce. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold.