There's a memorable tension between the suggestibility of the children and the forbidding countryside...

All the convincing mud in the world cannot make the story seem anything but synthetically pretty.

There's a laudable lack of cynicism or labored metaphors in Whistle Down the Wind, told mainly from the perspective of three siblings who come to understand with differing degrees of certainty that the world is not all they've been taught.

Thanks mostly to Hayley and other delightful youngsters, there are some touching moments in this strange and whimsical yarn.