Summary
Summary of The Day Before Yesterday
Key ideas
Key idea 1
Ordinary things open into adventure
Richard Middleton looks back at childhood through nurseries, gardens, beaches and London streets. An attic cupboard can become a pirate ship, a garden pool a place of magic, and a lawn mower a chariot. These changes are not just amusing games. They express his belief that children see something adults have lost.
With humor and a little sorrow, the essays defend a way of meeting the world in which every ordinary object can begin an adventure.
Key idea 2
Small hiding places hold whole worlds
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Key idea 3
Adults overlook the treasures children value
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Key idea 4
The value of play is doing
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Key idea 5
Childhood feeling lives in the senses
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Key idea 6
Dreamers keep a child's clear sight
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Key idea 7
Facts should leave room for wonder
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Key idea 8
Wonder begins with noticing small things
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The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
Read the rest freeWho it’s for
This book suits readers who love nursery memories, pirate tales, cricket, gardens and the sea, and anyone who enjoys a witty essayist with a soft spot for fairies, cats and dreamers.
What this book is
The Day Before Yesterday is a collection of essays by Richard Middleton, an English poet and writer who died in 1911. Each piece looks back at a nursery, a garden, a seaside beach or a London street as a child sees it. An attic cupboard becomes a pirate ship. A garden pool becomes a place of magic. A lawn mower becomes a chariot. Middleton writes with humor and a little sorrow, and he never lets the grown-ups off lightly.
You get thirty-three short pieces, and each one holds a single memory or a single argument. Together they make a case that children see the world more truly than adults do, because they treat every ordinary thing as the start of an adventure. In this summary we follow six main ideas through the book. First, we see how a child turns small hiding places into whole worlds.
In this summary
- 1Small hiding places become whole worldsFree
- 2Grown-ups cannot see what children treasure
- 3Play is serious work for children
- 4Seasons, sea and music shape childhood feeling
- 5Odd companions show the value of dreamers
- 6Facts and schooling threaten the fairy world
Key point 1 of 6
Small hiding places become whole worlds
Middleton opens with the mouse cupboard, a low space under the sloping roof of a big attic. Grown-ups see dust and mice. The children see a cave, then a ship's cabin. A rusty notched cutlass hangs at one end, and a cistern nearby gurgles like the sea against the hull.
The cupboard becomes the Black Margaret, and its crew become pirates. They drink ginger beer like rum and eat jam without bread. A cargo of dried apple rings counts as a rich prize. By candlelight they lie still and picture tropical seas full of stars. The mice are given the part of savage rats.
The same gift shapes the essay about a railway journey. A boy travels alone to the north, sitting among three stiff aunts and a girl who refuses his magazines. Out of the window he sees dragons in the valleys, witches in the thatched cottages and a great roc crossing the sky. A railway accident comes into his daydream, but it never harms him, and he ends by deciding he has travelled for three hundred years.
The magic pool in Hayward's Wood shows the other side of this power. Two brothers creep out at midnight to make a single wish, as a fairy book instructs. Their fear is real, even if the magic is not. Middleton's point is that imagination does not need proof. It needs only a place and a little darkness, and children find both everywhere.
That’s 1 of 6 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Check yourself
Why does Middleton believe children see the world more truly than adults?
Right. “Together they make a case that children see the world more truly than adults do, because they treat every ordinary thing as the start of an adventure.”Not quite. “Together they make a case that children see the world more truly than adults do, because they treat every ordinary thing as the start of an adventure.”
What matters most in children's play, according to Middleton?
Right. “Underneath, Middleton argues that the effort, not the result, is what counts.”Not quite. “Underneath, Middleton argues that the effort, not the result, is what counts.”
What worries Middleton about schooling?
Right. “He claims that children begin as impressionists who trust their senses, and that schooling teaches them to distrust those senses and rely on borrowed experience.”Not quite. “He claims that children begin as impressionists who trust their senses, and that schooling teaches them to distrust those senses and rely on borrowed experience.”
Questions about The Day Before Yesterday
What is The Day Before Yesterday about?
It is a collection of essays by Richard Middleton on childhood. They cover pirate games in an attic, boats, gardens, cricket, the sea, Christmas carols and the fairy world, all seen through a child's eyes with humor and affection.
Who are the Olympians in Richard Middleton's essays?
The Olympians are Middleton's name for the grown-ups of the nursery. Like distant gods, they give orders, set bedtimes and hand out improving presents, while the children follow a different world with its own rules.
What is the main message of The Day Before Yesterday?
Middleton argues that children see the world more truly than adults, because they trust their senses and turn ordinary things into adventures. He urges grown-ups to protect that wonder and to keep a little of it themselves.
Is The Day Before Yesterday a true story?
It is a series of essays drawn from memory rather than a single plot. Middleton writes about his own childhood and about people he knew, and he mixes real details with play and exaggeration for comic effect.
Is The Day Before Yesterday easy to read?
Each essay stands alone and runs only a few pages, so you can read one at a time. The language is lively and full of humor, with vivid scenes of pirates, gardens, cricket and the seaside.
