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.

Tom, an ill-treated chimney-boy, jumps into a cool stream to clean the soot off himself — and becomes a water baby, cleaner and happier than he has ever been, in a fairy world under river and sea. Meeting beautiful and frightening creatures, Tom travels to the Other-end-of-Nowhere on an unforgettable voyage of discovery.