What do you think?
Rate this book
Aviary Hall #2
Emma in Winter
Lonely and unhappy after her sister Charlotte goes away to boarding school, Emma discovers that she and Bobby Tumpkins, a fat, awkward classmate, are being propelled backward in time while they sleep.
160 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1966
2 people are currently reading
494 people want to read
About the author
Penelope Farmer
45 books69 followersPenelope Jane Farmer is an English fiction writer well known for children's fantasy novels. Her best-known novel is Charlotte Sometimes (1969), a boarding-school story that features a multiple time slip.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
November 9, 2016
Moderately interesting read, although I failed to get the point. And yes, I'm pretty sure there was meant to be a point, since there wasn't otherwise much of a story. But whatever was the parallel between the sometimes-ominous backward-flowing dream and the real life of mean Emma and kindly sad-sack Bobby was unclear to me.
August 18, 2019
Set a year or two after the events of
The Summer Birds
, this second children's novel concerning the strange and fantastical adventures of the Makepeace sisters follows Emma - the younger of the two, terribly lonely since Charlotte went off to boarding school, and her friend, Marly Scragg, left the village school to work in her father's shop - through a particularly fierce and snowy winter term. Haunted by a recurring dream, in which she is flying high above a strangely familiar landscape, Emma finds that she is joined, on her nighttime journeys, by Bobby Fumpkins, the chubby and much-ridiculed school outcast, to whom Emma herself has been none too kind. Slowly, with stops and starts, the two dreamers become friends. But where will their shared dreams, which seem to be taking them further and further back in time, lead them? And what will they find, once there...?
With the same feeling of strange and disquieting enchantment as its predecessor, and a similarly haunting exploration of conflicted, but deeply-felt emotions, Emma in Winter is a powerful book. I found Farmer's language in this one particularly beautiful, and had to stop, from time to time, and reread certain passages. The scene in which she describes the changing landscape beneath the dream-flying Emma and Bobby in particular, has a power that is difficult to capture, save by quotation:
"As they flew, they saw deserts replaces seas, seas replace deserts, water flowing in and out like enormous tides. There were green seas, brown seas, gray seas, blue seas, calm and wild ones, small and big ones. But every desert burned orange and tawny, their sands ebbing and flowing like water, their rocks shifting like roses back to bud, or like onions forming, skin on skin.
Until suddenly, not merely sand or sea but the whole land seemed to move, to rock like a million cradles. Mountains rose, rocked there, and sank back. They heaved up thickly like the bubbles in boiling porridge. But where those bubbles burst in the boiling, their centers were filled with a white-hot fire, and a heavy liquid melted from the land to flow upwards, darkly, to the bubbles' crests and vanish into these white-hot pits of fire."
Just lovely! I'm not sure why I never got around to Penelope Farmer's books, when a younger reader, but I'm glad I've finally rectified that omission. I look forward to the final volume about the Makepeace sisters, Charlotte Sometimes , and after that, to exploring more of Farmer's work!
With the same feeling of strange and disquieting enchantment as its predecessor, and a similarly haunting exploration of conflicted, but deeply-felt emotions, Emma in Winter is a powerful book. I found Farmer's language in this one particularly beautiful, and had to stop, from time to time, and reread certain passages. The scene in which she describes the changing landscape beneath the dream-flying Emma and Bobby in particular, has a power that is difficult to capture, save by quotation:
"As they flew, they saw deserts replaces seas, seas replace deserts, water flowing in and out like enormous tides. There were green seas, brown seas, gray seas, blue seas, calm and wild ones, small and big ones. But every desert burned orange and tawny, their sands ebbing and flowing like water, their rocks shifting like roses back to bud, or like onions forming, skin on skin.
Until suddenly, not merely sand or sea but the whole land seemed to move, to rock like a million cradles. Mountains rose, rocked there, and sank back. They heaved up thickly like the bubbles in boiling porridge. But where those bubbles burst in the boiling, their centers were filled with a white-hot fire, and a heavy liquid melted from the land to flow upwards, darkly, to the bubbles' crests and vanish into these white-hot pits of fire."
Just lovely! I'm not sure why I never got around to Penelope Farmer's books, when a younger reader, but I'm glad I've finally rectified that omission. I look forward to the final volume about the Makepeace sisters, Charlotte Sometimes , and after that, to exploring more of Farmer's work!
May 3, 2012
So this is the last book I read in the triptych about the Summers girls. This one is definitely the weirdest. It is highly conceptual, without the really strong narrative drive of the other two. I love and admire all three books, and I believe I would have been enchanted by this as a kid, but it was hard to hold onto the story, because it was really only at the very end you understood the point (sorta...I think) of the magical elements. Anyway, very interesting ideas in this novel about the potency of human imagination and the way ideas intertwine with (and manifest in) reality. I do love Emma, and I think this is a great example of why characters are more relatable when they are flawed and imperfect - she is a bad mood for most of the novel, but somehow one doesn't mind.
January 30, 2012
This was my least favorite of the the Aviary Hall trilogy. Had I not known the order in which these were written I would have assumed that she gave Emma a book because she had already given Charlotte one. It is nice to see Emma grow and mature in this book and that is convincingly done.
May 25, 2020
This review is for all three of what are designated the Aviary Hall books. The title is derived from the gloomy manor house in which orphans Charlotte and Emma Makepeace live with their grandfather. The house is on the outskirts of a small village, where in the first book, The Summer Birds, the two girls attend primary school. The second book is Emma's story after Charlotte leaves for boarding school (Emma in Winter) and Charlotte Sometimes finishes the series with Charlotte's adventures.
The books are young adult fantasies. They owe something in tone to the Green Knowe books by Boston, but easily stand on their own merits. Farmer doesn't provide conventionally happy endings to any of the books, nor are there explanations for a lot of the drivers of the stories. In the first, Charlotte and Emma encounter a strange boy as they walk to school. In short order he teaches them and the other pupils to fly. A glorious summer vacation is punctuated by expeditions, fights and attempts to uncover the boy's secret. He eats insects, is frequently described in birdlike terms but otherwise remains a mystery to all of the students. Is he the Pied Piper? The book ends with overtones of that story and Peter Pan.
Emma's story picks up during the winter term. Charlotte is gone, Emma is desolate and lonely, and the children have lost the ability to fly (which they had, and remember. In other words, the boy and the golden summer were not imaginary). But Emma begins to dream, and soon realizes that the most unpopular boy in the class is in the dreams. He too is flying. The atmosphere of the book is dense with subtext. Emma and Bobby --- the boy --- grow emotionally as they pursue the meanings of their shared dreams. It ends with no real resolution, but the indication that they have passed the threshold of childhood into the complexities of adolescence.
Charlotte Sometimes was my own favorite, but I truly loved all three. Charlotte finds herself spending every other day at boarding school in place of a girl who lived there in 1918-1919. That girl switches places with the Charlotte of the 1960s. It is a fairly straightforward time travel book, and gives a solid look at the experience of World War I's British home front. As in all of the books, the characters are very well drawn. Farmer doesn't skim over the horrendous loss of life suffered by the soldiers and their relatives alike.
Highly recommend the entire series, and it actually does help to read them in order.
The books are young adult fantasies. They owe something in tone to the Green Knowe books by Boston, but easily stand on their own merits. Farmer doesn't provide conventionally happy endings to any of the books, nor are there explanations for a lot of the drivers of the stories. In the first, Charlotte and Emma encounter a strange boy as they walk to school. In short order he teaches them and the other pupils to fly. A glorious summer vacation is punctuated by expeditions, fights and attempts to uncover the boy's secret. He eats insects, is frequently described in birdlike terms but otherwise remains a mystery to all of the students. Is he the Pied Piper? The book ends with overtones of that story and Peter Pan.
Emma's story picks up during the winter term. Charlotte is gone, Emma is desolate and lonely, and the children have lost the ability to fly (which they had, and remember. In other words, the boy and the golden summer were not imaginary). But Emma begins to dream, and soon realizes that the most unpopular boy in the class is in the dreams. He too is flying. The atmosphere of the book is dense with subtext. Emma and Bobby --- the boy --- grow emotionally as they pursue the meanings of their shared dreams. It ends with no real resolution, but the indication that they have passed the threshold of childhood into the complexities of adolescence.
Charlotte Sometimes was my own favorite, but I truly loved all three. Charlotte finds herself spending every other day at boarding school in place of a girl who lived there in 1918-1919. That girl switches places with the Charlotte of the 1960s. It is a fairly straightforward time travel book, and gives a solid look at the experience of World War I's British home front. As in all of the books, the characters are very well drawn. Farmer doesn't skim over the horrendous loss of life suffered by the soldiers and their relatives alike.
Highly recommend the entire series, and it actually does help to read them in order.
January 12, 2025
Published 4 years after the first book, this one focuses on Emma Makepeace, the younger sister whose older sister (and protagonist of The Summer Birds) has gone off to boarding school. Emma was bratty and unlikeable in that book and is so in most of this one also.
She does grow though the book, but mostly with no reason to do so. Her behavior towards Bobby is basically abuse, and his reaction is also very uncomfortable. The whole book takes place over a few weeks of winter.
The strangest element is a continuing shared dream between Emma and Bobby. If there was significance to this beyond teaching the characters to be better people, I missed it. In the dream, time proceeds backward at a glacial scale. Was Emma waiting for the garden of Eden (and disappointed by primordial oceans instead) a commentary on religion? Hard to tell.
Chronologically, we step back a year or so for the next book, with Charlotte as the focus. That book is the real goal of my search for a long-past read, and it is also the most widely known.
She does grow though the book, but mostly with no reason to do so. Her behavior towards Bobby is basically abuse, and his reaction is also very uncomfortable. The whole book takes place over a few weeks of winter.
The strangest element is a continuing shared dream between Emma and Bobby. If there was significance to this beyond teaching the characters to be better people, I missed it. In the dream, time proceeds backward at a glacial scale. Was Emma waiting for the garden of Eden (and disappointed by primordial oceans instead) a commentary on religion? Hard to tell.
Chronologically, we step back a year or so for the next book, with Charlotte as the focus. That book is the real goal of my search for a long-past read, and it is also the most widely known.
February 12, 2019
I’m not sure why this book was so hard to find and I had to order it from Amazon. The writing is clear and delightful. I sought it out after delightedly picking up Charlotte Sometimes after about thirty years.
I feel friendly and like I belong in these stories. The winter theme matched daily life perfectly. And my flying dreams don’t seem so weird anymore.
I love the ambiguity of the ending and the interior lives of all the characters. Even (or especially) that one we assume of Miss Halibutt the schoolteacher.
Sweet dreams!!!!! To friends to life le chaim.
I feel friendly and like I belong in these stories. The winter theme matched daily life perfectly. And my flying dreams don’t seem so weird anymore.
I love the ambiguity of the ending and the interior lives of all the characters. Even (or especially) that one we assume of Miss Halibutt the schoolteacher.
Sweet dreams!!!!! To friends to life le chaim.
January 9, 2015
This book took me ages to read as it struggled to hold my interest. Emma Makepeace's sister Charlotte is at boarding school. Emma misses her and becomes more sullen. She becomes head girl and Bobby Fumpkins who everyone teases becomes head boy. This irritates her and she is quite nasty to him. But she starts to have weird dreams about him...
This book is well written but had hardly any plot at all. I kept thinking there would be some brilliant twist but there wasn't. The best bit for me was the characters and the development of Emma. I hope Charlotte Sometimes is better.
This book is well written but had hardly any plot at all. I kept thinking there would be some brilliant twist but there wasn't. The best bit for me was the characters and the development of Emma. I hope Charlotte Sometimes is better.
May 4, 2015
I hoped the journey would end in a way that helped it all make more sense--but it did not. So I agree with the many reviews that say it's not as good as the other two books.
I am very glad I read it, though. it's still got a special quality that they all share.
more time with Emma was good. Bobby was very good.
I guess I really liked most things other than the surreal flight back to the origin of life.
I am very glad I read it, though. it's still got a special quality that they all share.
more time with Emma was good. Bobby was very good.
I guess I really liked most things other than the surreal flight back to the origin of life.
March 17, 2015
The Hall Family Chronicles reminds me of this series. Both are a little dates. In this series the children seem to interact a bit oddly to me. Maybe I didn't feel like this towards my school mates?
See: A Traveler In Time by Uttley, Magic Elizabeth by Norma Kassirer, Requiem for a Princess by Ruth Arthur, The Juniper Game by Sherryl Jordan, Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce.
See: A Traveler In Time by Uttley, Magic Elizabeth by Norma Kassirer, Requiem for a Princess by Ruth Arthur, The Juniper Game by Sherryl Jordan, Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pearce.
December 28, 2008
It's very good, but lacks the clear focus of The Summer Birds and the depth of Charlotte Sometimes.
October 23, 2016
Not a fan of this one. Cool concept, but boring delivery.
June 16, 2022
This short book comes before Charlotte Sometimes, which I read first. It is a sequel to The Summer Birds, which I still don't have. So I had to do some inferring here and there. Emma is Charlotte's younger sister, left alone after Charlotte goes to boarding school. The story is primarily about Emma's relationship with Bobby, a fat awkward unpopular boy. She is forced to work with him after their teacher makes them head girl and boy. Eventually they become friends and discover they are having the same strange and scary dreams where they keep moving backwards in time, watching the earth grow younger and younger.
August 15, 2022
While marginally better than 'The Summer Birds', Emma in Winter manages to delay the time travel until the last third of the book, making it a waiting game. The growing relationship between Emma and Bobby is interesting, but feels relegated to the side after the dreams are introduced in detail.
December 11, 2025
Emma lives in southern England and is friends with a boy named Bobby. They both have similar dreams about flying. Their dreams take them way back in time, even to the Ice Age. Adventure surrounds them and the reader is carried along with them. The book is a thrilling fantasy novel for middle grade readers.
September 26, 2021
Emma and Bobby begin to have a shared dream that they are flying over a landscape that is going further back in time. Sometimes the dream is scary, but Emma discovers that she can manipulate the dream by being a nicer person.
February 23, 2023
More a swirl of images, visions, and dreams than an actual story. Plus, the children were so cruel (to the teacher, to each other, and of course to poor Bobby) that I found it hard to read. And Emma was the worst of all. Absolutely savage.
September 4, 2017
Not a lot of magic in this book. Emma is not a likeable girl.
February 15, 2023
This one was disappointing. Not a lot happens and Emma isn't a particularly likeable or interesting protagonist.
abandoned
February 8, 2025I wanted to like this one, considering it was a companion book to Charlotte Sometimes, which I love. But it had a VERY different feel and just didn’t keep my interest.
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews