Children's book expert May Hill Arbuthnot also praised Enright's fine use of description and observed, 'Good prose style for any age level surprises and delights.' Writer and reviewer Anita Silvey calls Gone-Away Lake 'Enright's finest achievement' and praises 'her descriptive powers and unique ability to observe the world through the eyes of a child'. According to Saturday Review, Enright 'knows how to create real children'. A review by Irene Haas mentioned that 'animals abound, and secrets and clubs, danger and daring'. Reviewers then and now praise Enright's excellent characterization, her use of description, and strong presentation of setting and nature in Gone-Away Lake. It was named to the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list in 1970.

nominee for the international Hans Christian Andersen Award. In 1963 the American Library Association named Gone-Away Lake as the U.S. It received the New York Herald Tribune's Children's Spring Book Festival Award in 1957. Gone-Away Lake was a runner-up for the Newbery Medal in 1958 (now called a Newbery Honor Book). In Return to Gone-Away, a sequel published in 1961, the Blake family buys and restores a house at Gone-Away. Foster soon discovers the secret and eventually the rest of the Jarman and Blake families also become acquainted with the charms of Gone-Away and its inhabitants.

Stories of the days when the bog was a lake called Tarrigo are interspersed with the modern-day adventures of Portia and Julian, who at first keep the lake and their new friends a secret. Cheever, the town's only remaining inhabitants, soon become friends with the children, who set up a club in one of the empty houses. Once there, Portia and Julian spend their days exploring, and one day they discover an abandoned Victorian resort community next to a bog. The Jarmans have recently purchased a house in the country. Ten-year-old Portia Blake and her six-year-old brother Foster are going to see their favorite cousin, enthusiastic amateur naturalist Julian Jarman. Gone-Away Lake opens on a train traveling through the countryside of western New York state. It tells the story of cousins who spend a summer exploring and discover a lost lake and the two people who still live there.Įnright, the Krushes, and Harcourt produced a sequel published in 1961, Return to Gone-Away, in which the children's family buys a house near Gone-Away. It was a runner-up for the annual Newbery Medal and was named to the Lewis Carroll Shelf Award list in 1970. Gone-Away Lake is a children's novel written by Elizabeth Enright, illustrated by Beth and Joe Krush, and published by Harcourt in 1957.

Gone away lake