Chuyển đến nội dung chính

The Bone Garden, by Heather Kassner

The Bone Garden, by Heather Kassner (middle grade, Henry Holt, August 6 2019), is a lovely, creepy story perfect for those who love children finding found families.

Eleven-year-old Irréelle is used to spending her days hunting beneath the cemetery that is her home, making her way through dark tunnels of the bone garden to fetch the bone dust for her mistress, the demanding Miss Vesper.  She's never rewarded for her efforts; Miss Vesper constantly finds fault with her, criticizing her mismatched, crooked body.  It's Miss Vesper's fault that Irréelle is not a perfectly shaped girl, because she was the one who made her, something she's constantly reminding the girl about.  Irréelle is terrified that Miss Vesper, her creator, will un-create her some day, and also can't help but hope that if she is good enough, she can be remade into a "normal" girl.

Her life is lonely, until she meets two other children in the graveyard, Guy and Lass, and befriends as well on of Miss Vesper's new creations, a disembodied hand with a mind of its own.  The strange group take on a mission, finding a lost grave that could solve the mystery underling Miss Vesper's past, and their own strange lives.  Miss Vesper is not at all happy that Irréelle has started acting independently, and the threat she poses grows, while at the same time, Irréelle begins to realize just how little chance there was of Miss Vesper every caring for her. 

Irréelle's growth in self-confidence and self-reflection is inspiring, and the bonds of friendship she forges that help her in this are beautifully strong.  Guy and Lass, who are tougher to begin with, are a great foil for her, and the disembodied hand adds surprising comic relief. The creepy factor adds a macabre ambience to her story while not being so horrific as to terrify--yes, there are lots of dead bodies around, but it's not a gotcha sort of horror.

Short answer--a great one for kids who enjoy friendship stories with spooky atmosphere!

disclaimer: review copy received from the publisher.


Nhận xét

Đăng nhận xét

Popular Posts

The Wind Eye, by Robert Westall, for Timeslip Tuesday

This week's Timeslip Tuesday book is an older English one-- The Wind Eye , by Robert Westall (upper MG/YA 1976, still in print).  Westall's work ranges from picture books to adult, often exploring how the past hits the present in dark and mysterious ways.  Which is what happens in The Wind Eye.... It begins when a family, comprising a mother and her teenaged son married to a father with two daughters (one a young teen and one a little girl), setting off to the northeast coast of England to stay in the old house the father has just inherited.  They are not a happy family.  The kids get along fine, but the parents are not getting on well at all. And then the past and the present collide.   St. Cuthbert still is a real person to the people of this part of the Northumberland coast, and he becomes so to the kids as well when they find a boat that travels back to his time, taking them out to the island that was his retreat from the world.   Along the way, there's...
Đăng nhận xét
Đọc thêm

Conjured

by Sarah Beth Durst Eve is a girl placed in a special witness protection program that concentrates on people like her who can do magic.  They protect her and other strong magic-weilders from a mysterious serial killer who has been targeting people like them.  However, Eve cannot use her magic without blacking out and having visions of the Magician and the Storyteller, and she has no memory of her life before the witness protection, except for a few flashes here and there.  Often, when she blacks out, she'll lose days, weeks, or even months of her memories.  All she knows is that she is very important to the people trying to catch the serial killer, and they need her to remember her past. The plot developed slowly, but not in a bad way.  It took a while to figure out what was going on, but figuring it out was interesting.  The memory loss was done pretty well, and the characters were consistent and distinct.  Three of the characters - Aiden, Topher, and...
Đăng nhận xét
Đọc thêm

The Dragon Thief, by Zetta Elliott

In Dragons in a Bag (link to my review), Zetta Elliott introduced a  young boy named Jaxon, who was given a job to do by a magical old woman, Ma.  He had to return three baby dragons to the world of magic.  It didn't go as planned, not that Jaxon knew enough about what was going on to really "plan" anything, but he did his best.  It wasn't enough.  One of the babies was stolen by Kavita, the little sister of his best friend, Vik. The Dragon Thief   (Random House, Oct 22 1019) picks up the story right where we left it.  Jaxon is worried about Ma, who has fallen into a strange sleep, and he's desperate to get the baby dragon to the magical world.  Kavita is worried about the baby dragon, which grows at an alarming rate when it gets fed.  When she realizes she can't keep it safe, her old aunty who lives with her family decides to help her get it home. So on the one hand we have Jaxon and Vik, racing to find Kavita while figuring out how they ca...
Đăng nhận xét
Đọc thêm