There is the most explicit attempt in Tom's Midnight Garden to understand the nature of time, one's attitude to it, its relation to one's own existence. Many aspects come over powerfully: the child growing up and changing; the destruction of the garden and its transformation into a housing estate; and a mean little yard mirroring a whole changed pattern of society. But I think that Philippa Pearce's resistance to the new polluted environment loses its impact because it becomes id...

Personal experience, transmuted by imagination and fine writing—these are found … in Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden. In this story, time loses its limits. (p. 122) Although time stands still in Tom's world while he is in the past, it does not stand still for Hatty [Tom's playmate in the garden]. She is growing up even as Tom plays with her, and the magic, the wonder of the garden, the transcending of time must come to an end with the ending of her childhood...

[Tom's Midnight Garden is] the perfect fantasy of our time…. This deeply moving, beautifully written and completely convincing time-fantasy is one of the most perfectly conceived and executed children's books of the past twenty years. (p. 128) The author makes beautifully subtle and complex use of [the] time-shift….

Tom's Midnight Garden … is one of those rare, miraculously individual books which belong to no category and demand absolute acceptance from the reader. Philippa Pearce wrote here a kind of ghost story, except that the ghost was still alive, and a kind of historical novel, its period carefully concealed from the reader. (p. 198) The concluding passages have a perfection unmatched in children's literature.

In Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden … the idea that time has no barriers was embodied in nearly perfect literary form. No loose ends, no inconsistencies mar the book. Miss Pearce can explain with few words but great conviction such supernatural events as Tom's passing through a closed door or the actual process of a room's transformation from its unfamiliar past appearance to its familiar present. Tom's acceptance of the fact that he can enjoy a garden that h...

Unlike traditional fairy tales, this beautifully written fantasy [Tom's Midnight Garden] does not depend on supernatural performance to turn the trick. Rather, it is the magic of the characters' personalities and of the mysterious movement in time that lifts this story beyond the usual time and dream fantasies in children's literature. (p. 270) Philippa Pearce's particular contribution to this fantastic adventure in time is in the way she makes her characters come alive with natu...