Jimbo / The Education of Uncle Paul

JIMBO     'We dance with phantoms and with shadows play. . .' Jimbo is a very imaginative boy, and together with his brothers and sisters, they make up a lot of games around an old building on their father's property that they call The Empty House, their object of 'dreadful delight.' Then the Colonel hires a new governess. Miss Lake is much too level-headed to believe any of the children's stories about the Empty House. She knows that it's all nonsense. But in order to 'knock the nonsense' out of young Jimbo's head, she makes up a story about the Inmate of the House, a very bad creature indeed. Instead of bringing Jimbo to his senses, the story fills him with a real sense of dread. He becomes convinced that something evil lurks within The Empty House. And, of course, he is right—for Fright itself lives within, ready to reach out and snatch young Jimbo into his clutches!     THE EDUCATION OF UNCLE PAUL   Paul Waters returns to England after having lived for the past twenty years in the Canadian wilderness. Unused to adult company, emotionally he feels little more than a boy inside. When he moves in with his widowed sister Margaret and her three children, he tries hard to keep this inner child hidden. But Nixie, Toby and Jonah figure him out right away, and introduce him to their imaginative games. These are no mere hide-and-seeks, but 'aventures' that take them all to another realm, the land beyond the Crack, where all the lost and disgarded things can be found--a land of beauty and mystery.  And it is here that Paul truly comes alive, finally coming to understand himself, and all that truly matters in life. 3