Elizabeth Goudge

Hello!
How are you?  Well, I hope!  Isn't it a super day!?!  I love the sun! 
When I was young, the BBC made a children's TV series called Moonacre (it starred the girl who played Jill in The Silver Chair as Maria Merryweather).  It really captured my heart, that series and I watched the credits with sadness when the series finished.  But as those credits rolled, I noticed the 'adapted from Elizabeth Goudge's book- Little White Horse.  It was then that I went to WH Smith and ordered my first book (usually I'd buy what they had in the shop). 
Goodness knows what happened to my original copy but recently, I found a copy of it in a charity shop and bought it gleefully.

It tells the story of Maria Merryweather, a Victorian girl aged 16, who goes to live in her cousin's home, Moonacre in the Moonacre valley near the village of Silvery Dew.  She sights a little white horse fleetingly as she arrives.  Much is mysterious at Moonacre, people call her the Moon Princess and she seems to spy what her nurse, Miss Heliotrope, used to call her imaginary friend when she was a litle girl.  There seems a great mystery.  Why did all the previous Moon princesses have to leave Moonacre, why did they always quarrel with the Sun Merryweathers. And who is that little white horse and why does Wrolf, the companion dog, seem so like a lion? 
The story is really beautiful, wonderfully imaginative with a great deal of heart, love and mystery.  The people of SilveryDew have faith that all will turn out well this time with Maria as Moon Princess.  A lovely story that girls particularly would enjoy.  Her powers of description are just enough to make you sigh at the beauty of it but not too much to bore you! It's over 50 years old but this story stands the test of time.

After finishing it, I noticed that I had bought another book by Elizabeth Goudge a while back that was on my shelf called Smoky House which I hadn't read yet.  I read this one too.  It was set in Devon and was the account of a happy family of children who live with their father in an inn.  The story begins as a mysterious fiddle player arrives in the village. His music is so wonderful and captivating, they cannot bear to let him leave so he stays.   The children fear the famous highwayman and smuggler, The man in the red handkerchief and tell tales about him.  The squire of the village plays with them and is so generous to all the poor in the village.  All goes well until one day,  they discover the smugglers are a little close to home and the fiddler is not what he seems.

Again, the author's description is beautiful and you really warm to the place and the characters and feel you are amongst them.  The mystery of who the fiddler is and who the smugglers are is a little obvious but the story is so delightful that it just carries you along!

Both accounts are beautiful and show integrity and faith in a really beautiful family orientated way.  I wholeheartedly recommend them!