All on a Winter's Day

Hippo Hauntings #7

by Lisa Taylor

Lucy and her brother awaken one cold winter's night to discover that they are alone in their house, that someone has rearranged the furniture, and that two ghostly children and their evil aunt have arrived

Genres: Horror, Paranormal, Young Adult, Childrens, Mystery, Fiction

138 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Lisa Taylor is the Education Program Manager for Seattle Tilth. She is a co-author of the Maritime Northwest Garden Guide and a frequent speaker on soils, compost, edible landscaping and children's gardening. She facilitates training for teachers and others interested in schoolyard gardening and is passionate about teaching children and their parents where their food comes from and how to care for living things.
"

Reviews

[Grace Chan · Rating 4 out of 5]

So I basically guessed the twist from just reading the synopsis on the back of the book 😅😅😅

Lucy and her brother wake up in their room one day to find that nothing is the same as it was. For one, they are super cold AF and can't get warm no matter what they do. Their mom is missing. All furnishings have been replaced with someone else's. They try to get out of the house but there's like, an invisible barrier surrounding the parameter of the home that they can't cross. OH and theres 2 ghost kids that live in their house now with their evil, abusive, hateful ghost Aunt. Sooooo, wtf is going on?? The kids surmise they are somehow back in time to when the other kids might have lived at this house. The reality is a lot more depressing than that.

This book was a sad one, dude. Pretty sure this would've effed me up as a kid had I read it back then. Kids DIE, get beaten, cry pitifully for help to no avail, get chased with knives by evil bitch Aunties, and just mournfully miss their mom who is either dead or missing 😭😭😭

3 out of 5 whacks of the cane from the Evil Bitch Aunt. Cry it out but bide your time, little children. That dispicable old bag will get her just desserts in the end. 💀💀💀

[Erica Leigh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not your typical ghost story. Fast-paced, v spooky and atmospheric. Dread Aunt is Disney Villain material.

[Kate · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this in our library's book sale room. It is clearly for a younger audience, but with the "Point" imprint, I thought it might be on par with some of the old Point Horror titles I've been reading.

Lucy and Hugh are a sister and brother who awake one night to a host of creepy sounds and find themselves in a house that isn't quite theirs. Their bedroom is the same, but the rest of the house is full of furniture they don't recognize, and there seems to be an invisible barrier preventing them from leaving their yard. When they hear and see two other children running around the house, in addition to a cruel woman who appears to be the children's aunt, Lucy and Hugh decide they have been flipped back in time in order to help the children.

Unfortunately, I guessed the twist of the ending in about chapter two, so I kept waiting for Lucy and Hugh to figure out that they were the ghosts. A younger reader might not have seen this plot twist so many times (for example, in the movie "The Others"), and the story had enough creepy moments and mystery that a younger reader (think ages 9-12) would probably enjoy it. As an adult, however, I didn't understand why the Dread Aunt would try to kill the children by poisoning them with berries, when there was a nice pond covered in thin ice handy, which had killed two other children just 10 years earlier. Or why she would be so obvious as to dig graves for them in the yard.

[Alejandro Joseph · Rating 4 out of 5]

Akin to The Ghost Next Door in a plethora of ways, this novella’s a lightly flawed piece that is incredibly well done. The characters are solid enough and we get a lot to chew on for their personalities and the dynamic of the main siblings. The revelations towards what’s going on, why, and what it all means are fantastic and made the climax utterly peak; the resolution, in other words, made the story for me. The ending is great too, mostly for its delivery as I do find it rather predictable (I’ll get on that in a minute). The writing is really good and elegant for kids horror standards (yes, this is kids horror—loosely). There’s some tension with the aunt figure that I liked and her character added that darkness the book was written for (to put it straight she is soulless and wanted to kill some certain characters). The foreshadowing was also better done here than I anticipated, even though I foresaw the general framework and twist before I even read the blurb; I didn’t even catch onto the water themes sprinkled throughout lol. And yeah, the story generally slapped towards the end, however I have some issues. The writing is good and all—BUT, I didn’t like how it drug on sometimes. Imagery is always a treat but there are things that could’ve been shortened in respect of the reader’s time. It’s 138 pages of stuff that could’ve been trimmed to 120 had the author honed in on that mark without it being a detriment to the quality, and preferably a compliment. Alongside drawn out scenes and imagery there’s also the exposition: it’s jarring. The story felt hard to get into because of the way it throws you into this world. It makes you just as confused as the kids, which is good, but we also know nothing much of the kids themselves, even if it kinda makes sense. I just wish that first forty pages were more engaging and had some level of pre-winter’s day happenings exposition to give us something more to chew at the start. And my biggest takeaway is the general predictability. I don’t know if it’s just me and my knowledge or I’m just a good guesser, but I called the big twist at the very end of the book before I even read the book’s blurb. The tagline just makes it too obvious perhaps, or it’s just the factoid that the twist has been done in media (varying in form of delivery) a trillion times. To give this book credit, though, it came before Ghost Next Door and Sixth Sense, the most infamous offenders of this twist in my eyes. Overall, 8/10. It’s great-ish, more so just very good. Loved the tone of this one. Billing-boop bop.

[Natalie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a middle grade horror novel set in a haunted house on a cold, wintry day. The story was atmospheric, and the Dread Aunty was seriously creepy, but I guessed the twist almost immediately. It was heavy handed and fairly obvious, though maybe to a middle grade reader it wouldn’t be? It was still a quick, entertaining read.

[AquaMoon · Rating 2 out of 5]

I first read this one when I was about...13 or 14 (ish). My best friend and I were really into those dime-a-dozen, so numerous they were probably ghost-written paperback paranormal novels targeting teen girls in the early 90s. We devoured dozens of them, and, after exclaiming how "freaky" they were, forgot them. However, All On A Winter's Day was one of those rare cases where the story actually stuck in my head, at least in part. All I could remember was it was a ghost story with a twist The main characters, a brother and sister, wake to find their parents gone, their home changed, and two ghostly children wandering about. They set about trying to help the ghosts. The twist comes at the end where the reader learns the protags are actually the ghosts. Apart from that, I couldn't recall anything. Not the title, not the author, not the details. Not knowing everything about every book ever written... sigh! I know, I'm a shame to my profession.

However, the memory of how creepy the story was had been haunting (pun very intended) me for some time now, so I put out a request to the Great Brain over at the Yalsa listserv. I told what I remembered of the book...and the next day I had my answer (thank you Great Brain!). I searched and found the book in my library system, sent for it, and eagerly awaited revisiting the story that had so creeped me out as a teen.

And I learned a valuable lesson: Some things are best left as memories. The book was poorly written and riddled with typos, redundancies, and cliches. Characters were underdeveloped. The plot dragged. I ended up walking away from the book after 3 or 4 chapters, thoroughly disgusted with my teenage self for thinking this book was quality literature. Of course that same teenage self loved Fear Street and everything by Christopher Pike, so there you go.

Next time I remember bits and pieces of a book I read in my teens, I'll leave well enough along.


However, therewas that book where the main character's name was Cinnamon and her new house was haunted by the ghost of a girl who'd lived there before. There was a mystery. I think there was something in it about flowers (roses?) and a stained glass window. The protag might have been recovering from a personal tragedy (death of a parent or sibling?). There might also have been something about a cursed soldier statue (WW1 maybe) who came to life at the full moon, but that might have been a different book. Either way, I'd be curious to revisit that one.

[Lima · Rating 5 out of 5]

I read this as a young child ans haven’t read-read since. It scared the absolute heck out of me. I can still recall some of the scenes.

[Lucrezia Madella · Rating 4 out of 5]

It is meant for a young audience so I'm not sure if I would enjoy it as when I was a teenager (read it at 12), however, at that time, it was a really thrilling read and I loved it, especially the plot twist.

[Caroline · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm still unpacking boxes of books after moving last year. More books than space but we are finding solutions. Solutions that do not include getting rid of books! This has caused me to put my hands on some books that I haven't read since 1991. So... I decided to read some of them. Any 80's bookworm feels a thrill at a point paperback. This is not the strongest of the bunch, that spot will forever belong to Christopher Pike's first three novels, but it's still a fun read. It's a keeper. Sorry, Dear Husband.

[Jarrett · Rating 4 out of 5]

A book that jumped right into the action and never slowed down. It has a crazy surprise and the end!!!!

[Courtney Schafer · Rating 1 out of 5]

So unbelievably boring and the twist was so obvious that it revealed itself in the first chapter.

[E. D. Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had trouble getting into this one. It wasn't bad; it had some tense moments and an interesting premise. It just wasn't for me.

[Madame Jane · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excellent writing, and very atmospheric.

[Rachael Robinson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was amazing!! I’d never heard of it but stumbled across it and I wasn’t disappointed was not expecting the ending but loved it!!!

[Donna Siebold · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found this on a YA shelf in our library and I would have to say it is misfiled. It is definitely juvenile material. This is the story of Hugh and Lucy who awaken in their home one cold winter's day, but everything is amiss. Their room looks the same, but the rest of the house is cold, essentially unfurnished and silent. Silent until they notice two other children in the house. They are there with their aunt, a cold red-haired woman, who appears to hate the children. As Hugh and Lucy try to figure out what is happening, they realize that they are invisible to the other inhabitants of the house. They are very sad looking for their own mother, but they are intent on saving the other children from the vicious aunt.

The story is quite predictable (to an adult). I knew from the beginning that Lucy and Hugh were dead, at first, I also thought the others in the home were dead but that turned out not to be the case. The plot is vaguely similar to "The Others", a Nicole Kidman movie.

[Ari Jarvis · Rating 4 out of 5]

I still really enjoy this book, but knowing the ending made it far less mind-blowing than when I read it as a little girl. I also hadn't noticed it was a British author before.

I was surprised which visuals have stuck with me for all these years. The images of the red berries on the aunt's white fur and white snow were indelibly marked on my brain. I had remembered them as raspberries, which was wrong, but it's the visual that stuck with me. This book was another book that got me hooked on reading, and then wanting to write. I guess I wanted to be able to wriggle into other people's heads, too.

The characters are rather simple, except for Lucy and Hugh, and flat. The twins didn't have anything by way of personalities. And the Dread Aunt was just evil. But I guess the book worked as well as a children's novel is meant to work.

[Pamela (Here to Read Books and Chew Gum) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this book as a child in one afternoon. I literally couldn't put it down. It is a really clever ghost story, akin to The Others. As an adult it's quite a shallow tale, but if you read it as a child it is really spine tingling.

[✦BookishlyRichie✦ · Rating 4 out of 5]

creeped me the hell out!

[Lisa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really like it. The characters, especially Hugh, are kind of annoying. I think I might have liked it better if I was younger.

[Nattie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this one, and it was going so well, then it just became sort of muddled. It was creepy and it did chill me, and it also made me sad, but it just wasn't great.

[Cats W. Bats, Esq. · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was basically that Nicole Kidman movie, The Others.

[S · Rating 3 out of 5]

Think others ( the movie with Kidman) meets mostly ghostly.

[Patrick Clocks · Rating 5 out of 5]

I recommend this book for Halloween if you want a Spooky read that isn't Horror!