Marianne dreams - Catherine Storr

'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 at drawing. Confined to her bed with an illness she finds a pencil in her great-grandmother's workbox, but the house she draws is as unsatisfying as always - like a shaky doll's house with grass as unlike anything growing as ever. But that night she dreams and rediscovers her drawing in a completely new world.

Returning to this world night after night, Marianne encounters a strange but familiar boy and the house takes on an increasingly ominous significance for both of them . . .

Funny, unusual, indefinable, the spirit of Marianne Dreams lingers long after the final page.