The water babies

HarperCollins is proud to present its new range of best-loved, essential classics. ‘In fact, the fairies had turned him into a water-baby.

A water-baby? You never heard of a water-baby. Perhaps not. That is the very reason why this story was written.’ Poor Tom is an orphan, employed by the underhand Grimes as a chimney sweep.

While cleaning a chimney one day, Tom becomes lost and appears in Ellie’s bedroom.

She mistakes him for a thief and he flees in fright, down to the edge of a stream where he falls asleep.

In his dreamlike world, he becomes a water baby, swimming with the other water babies and discovering an aquatic playground full of strange and wonderful characters.