Goodnight Mister Tom is a children's novel by English author Michelle Magorian, published by Kestrel in 1981. Harper & Row published a U.S. edition within the calendar year. Set in England during World War II, it features a boy abused at home in London who is evacuated to the country during the Battle of Britain. In the care of Mister Tom, an elderly recluse, he experiences a new life of loving and care.
Magorian and Mister Tom won the annual Guardian Children's Fiction Prize, a once-in-a-lifetime award judged by a panel of British children's writers. She was also a commended runner up for the Carnegie Medal from the British librarians, recognising the year's best children's book by a British subject.
The novel has been twice adapted as a musical and once as a film, Goodnight Mister Tom (1998). In 2003, the novel was listed at number 49 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.
Famous quotes containing the word mister:
“Something is happening here
But you don’t know what it is
Do you, Mister Jones?”
—Bob Dylan [Robert Allen Zimmerman] (b. 1941)