As I’ve said a couple of hundred times, I graduated from Jack and Jill straight to Terrance Dicks, missing hundreds of classic children’s books along the way.* You won’t be surprised to learn, then, that I’d not heard of Marianne Dreams by Catherine Storr until it popped up on my podcast playlist (because, yes, this is another Backlisted book…). For those of you who have read it, I’m sure you loved it. Good news: so do I.

On her tenth birthday, Marianne gets to ride a horse (yay!). But soon after, she comes down with a bug (boo). It’s no ordinary cold, with the Doctor requiring she stay in bed for several months (double boo!).** Bored out of her mind, she starts drawing, using a pencil owned by her Grandmother. Her first picture is of a house. When Marianne dreams, she finds herself in the house she drew. As she adds to the image, including a young boy looking through the house’s window, they also appear in her dreams. But a young girl’s imagination can be a dangerous thing…

I love that Storr, along with her main character, never lets us leave Marianne’s bedroom. Four walls circumscribe her world. The only glimpse we and Marianne get of the outside comes from her governess (Marianne is being homeschooled). Sickly children in kid’s literature is a common trope, but here, it felt different, fresh, and even edgy. There’s something important in reminding a bed-bound child that despite everything, their imaginations and dreams are boundless.

Mark—another ill pre-teen—is the boy in the window, though, unlike Marianne, he has no recollection of the waking world. Their initially fractious relationship has spine-chilling repercussions, namely the creation of the uber-creepy THEY (capitals intended)—rocks with cyclops-like eyes. THEY would have frightened the shit out of me if I’d read this as a kid. As an adult, THEY still give me the heebees and the jeebees.

But what shines through, what makes Marianne Dreams such a beautiful, moving, enduring novel, is that it’s about a friendship—about two children, separated physically, brought together by their dreams, who courageously face their illness and the threat of THEY together.

*Fine, I’m exaggerating. I read Blyton, Dahl, Cormier, and Rubenstein. And I loved Z for Zachariah by Robert C O’Brein. So it wasn’t a complete wasteland. But I certainly didn’t empty the local library, reading all the available children’s literature.  

**I never figured out what Marianne had. The internet was no help—stupid internet.