Tom's Midnight GardenTom's Midnight Garden is a low fantasy novel for children by Philippa Pearce The main character Tom is a modern boy living under quarantine with his aunt and uncle in a 1950s city apartment building that was a country house during the 1880s1890s. At night he slips to the old garden where he finds a girl playmate in the past. "Tom's Midnight Garden" is a story about the transformation and growth of two main characters within the work. Pearce opens the novel with the character Tom, who is currently spending the summer with his aunt and uncle. At the beginning of the story, he is lonely. He wants to go home. This feeling and the need for companionship open the doors of his imagination as he begins to create a magical world. Pearce structures "Tom's Midnight Garden" where the main character enters the magical world through a garden at midnight. In this world, Tom meets a young Victorian girl, who ages by years every "day" Tom is there. With this context in mind, themes of the work include references to time and the relationship the past has to the present. By the end of "Tom's Midnight Garden," Tom and the now older Hatty share a conversation of their dream experiences. On the final night before Tom is due to go home, he goes downstairs to find the garden is not there. He desperately tries to run around and find it, but crashes into a set of bins from the present day courtyard, waking up several residents. He shouts Hatty's name in disappointment, before his Uncle Alan finds him and puts the events down to Tom sleepwalking. The following morning, Mrs Bartholomew summons Tom to apologise, only to reveal herself as Hatty, having made the link when she heard him call her name. The events Tom experienced were real in Hatty's past; he has stepped into them by going into the garden at the times she dreamt of them. On the final night, she had instead been dreaming of her wedding with Barty.