This British fantasy trilogy is about the adventures of two young sisters, Charlotte and Emma Makepeace, who live at Aviary Hall. However, the only book where Charlotte and Emma are together is the first one. The sisters are separated for the other two books in the trilogy because Charlotte goes away to boarding school.

The best-known book of the trilogy is probably the third book, Charlotte Sometimes, in which only Charlotte appears without Emma. Charlotte Sometimes takes place at Charlotte’s boarding school, and it involves time travel.

The trilogy was written by Penelope Farmer, who is also the author of other books for children. During the early 2000s, she maintained a few blogs of story writing and information about her life.

Books in the Series:

Charlotte Sometimes

The Summer Birds (1962)

Charlotte and Emma meet a boy who teaches them and their friends to fly with magic.

Emma in Winter (1966)

After Charlotte leaves for boarding school, Emma is lonely. Then, she starts having strange dreams, and she discovers that a boy in town is having the same dream. What does it mean?

Charlotte Sometimes (1969)

Charlotte begins life at boarding school, but every night, when she goes to sleep in her school bed, she switches places with another girl who was a student at the school back in 1918, Clare. Charlotte doesn’t know why this is happening, but she and Clare begin sharing their lives, living in each other’s place on different days. Charlotte worries about getting trapped in the past and becoming Clare permanently, losing her identity as Charlotte.

4 thoughts on “Aviary Hall Books”

  1. Is it still possible to get the first two books? I didn’t love Charlotte Sometimes, but maybe reading the other two will improve it in hindsight?

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    1. Oh, yes, it’s still possible to get the first two books. They’re both out of print, so they’re more expensive to buy as collectors’ items, but fortunately, both The Summer Birds and Emma in Winter are available to read for free online through Internet Archive. There are no official audiobooks, but Kent Kently has posted his own readings of The Summer Birds and Emma in Winter on YouTube, if you would like to listen to them.

      I haven’t posted my reviews of these books yet, but I found them both a little more trippy than Charlotte Sometimes. One thing about reading them is that you do get a little more of Charlotte’s background in The Summer Birds and a look at her when she’s just being herself and not switching identities. Emma in Winter also includes both elements of the flying from The Summer Birds and time travel. Emma, Charlotte’s sister, has her own experience with time travel, and she and a friend read a little about the theory of time travel and how human thought can influence time travel. The idea of human thought connecting someone to past times relates to Charlotte’s time travel adventures later because part of the key to her time travel was her state of mind.

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