There they make the acquaintance of the housekeeper’s niece, Mabel, who takes them into the castle’s treasure chamber, where sliding panels reveal glittering jewels.
But one day, while out on a walk, they stumble upon the entrance to a secret tunnel, and suddenly, they are in the midst of the adventure of a lifetime! For when they emerge once more into the sunlight, they are in the gardens of a beautiful castle, complete with maze and lake. Cathy and her brothers can’t go home for the holidays because their cousin has the measles, so they are obliged to spend the summer at Cathy’s school, in the care of the French teacher, “Mademoiselle” – a circumstance they are gloomily certain will preclude all fun and adventures.
The Enchanted Castle recounts the adventures of Gerald, Cathy, Jimmy, and their friend Mabel. For if there is one book I remember from my childhood, it is this one – never mind Black Beauty, Heidi, and Treasure Island, this was the Book of Books, the one book that ruled them all! “Oh look!” I cried in delight, though there was nobody there but me. Nesbit’s The Enchanted Castle which used to belong to me. I looked through the children’s books in the attic (you can usually trust my mother to have bought a rare edition of something or other ten years before you even knew it existed) and I came across a beautiful hardcover copy of E. Even before I’d finished it, I was dying to delve into the titles Byatt mentioned – classics I’d grown up with like Peter Pan and The Railway Children, but also others I’d never heard about (or only in passing) and which I immediately wanted to get my hands on: Kenneth Grahame’s The Golden Age, George MacDonald’s At the Back of the North Wind, or Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill. Reading The Children’s Bookthis summer transported me to Edwardian England and the golden era of children’s literature.
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