Searching for a book, maybe you guys can help?

[PrincessKiara]

Hi. When I was in elementary school, our teacher read this book to us that really left an impression on me. I`ve been trying to get ahold of it, but trouble is I can`t for the life of me remember the title of the book or the names of any of the characters. I`ve tried googling for it, but when I can`t be specific enough, that proves pretty pointless.
I live in Norway, but I have no idea of the author is Norwegian/Scandinavian or if the book has been translated. It`s most likely written prior to 1990.

So here`s what I remember about the plot:

There are two children, a boy and a girl. (Siblings, I believe) They are in a coma and basically the story is about what these children excperience while in this state. It`s like they`re in an alternate reality/dimension, and they encounter many different characters (I do only remember them interacting with humans, though)
One thing I remember is the children at one point staying at a house together with a very strict woman who kept yelling at them, whipping them with a hazel switch and forced them to work hard every day. The children found however that no matter how much and hard they worked, when they woke up every morning, they found the house just as dirty/untidy as it had been the previous day.

The only other things I remember are random lines of dialougue...

Any help would be immensly appreciated, I would so love to re-discover this story. Thanks.

[nathalie]

Hmm, it does sound like it could be from the Chrestomanci series ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chrestomanci

Just taking a wild guess though, because the explanation you give, just reminds me so much of one of the books in the series "Charmed life".

If you say you remember some lines, have you tried putting them between " " and do a search in google?
(that's how I try to search for song lyrics if I don't know the title or artist)