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I remember reading a paperback children's book when I was younger (around 2010 to 2014 perhaps) about some nurses (i.e. nannies) with a baby who needed to get through a portal or something which only worked every few years, but missed it. Anyone know what this book was?

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This could be The Secret of Platform 13 by Eva Ibbotson, published 1994. The main characters come a magical floating island, and every nine years a portal opens for nine days in a gump leading to the titular abandoned platform in King's Cross Station. On one occasion, the island's infant prince is brought through the gump by his triplet nurses, who had originally come from Britain and wished to see it again, but the prince ends up kidnapped by a childless rich woman as the portal closes. The rest of the book is about the rescue attempt nine years later.

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  • What is a "gump"? The only definition I can find online is "a foolish person".
    – Daniel Roseman
    Commented Aug 10 at 8:49
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    But also LOL at the idea of a book with the concept of a hidden platform at Kings Cross, three years before a certain wizarding book was published.
    – Daniel Roseman
    Commented Aug 10 at 8:49
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    @DanielRoseman: "Once every child in the land could have told you that a gump was a special mound, a grassy bump on the earth, and that in this bump was a hidden door which opened every so often to reveal a tunnel which led to a completely different world."
    – jwodder
    Commented Aug 10 at 10:23
  • Yes thank you, that is it.
    – JDF
    Commented Aug 11 at 1:05

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