Stefan is revealed as a runaway movie star and returned with no regrets, and the children settle down to enjoy what is left of the summer, secure in their new-found abilities and the knowledge that Daddy will get well. A minor crisis and the acerbic advice of an older friend cause the children to admit that there's method to Aunt Dymphna's madness and little that can be said for themselves. Twelve-year-old Penny struggles to cook and clean and console her disgruntled brood and, with older brother Alex, to sneak food to constantly complaining Stefan. To compound their troubles, a boy of eleven appears, a fellow passenger on their plane, claiming to be the son of a hunted emigre from a communist country he calls himself Stefan and begs sanctuary. Great-Aunt Dymphna sports a black cape and a man's tweed hat, spouts verses of Carroll and Lear and Chesterton in answer to the simplest question, and confounds the children altogether by leaving them to their own resources-which are slight-in her large, sparsely furnished, cobweb-strewn house.
Great-Aunt Dymphna, in western Ireland, when Mummy has to Join Daddy, suddenly stricken with some unexplained illness in some remote, unidentified spot in the Far East. The four Gareths, eight through thirteen, are dispatched to their only available relative. Despite tears and many mishaps, they learn something new every day, and living with Great Aunt Dymphna becomes an adventure.Summer as time suspended, as fulcrum between past and future, is a favorite theme of Juvenile authors and often, as here, there's more moral than magic to it. And, to the children''s consternation, she expects them to fend for themselves. She lives in a ramshackle house, quotes swathes of poetry and flits about like a great bat. Great Aunt Dymphna is like nobody they''ve ever met. So Alex, Penny, Naomi and Robin are sent to Ireland to stay with an eccentric distant relative. Their father, an epidemiologist, is ill abroad, and their mother must go to help him. Summer will be different for the Gareth children this year. Help yourselves, children, help yourselves."" Then, flapping her cloak as if to shoo off a clutter of chickens, Great Aunt Dymphna was gone.'' All that the earth brings forth to feed you, and you stand there asking foolish questions until my head reels. ''""You have a whole wing of the house to yourselves. For me, the best Noel Streatfeild of all'' HILARY MCKAY
With beautiful illustrations by Edward Ardizzone
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