Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
After the death of her father, Ashley and her mother move to a new town to start over. Ashley doesn't mind their small, second-floor apartment, but she takes an immediate dislike to grumpy Miss Cooper, the owner of the house. Fascinated by the tangled, overgrown rose garden in the back yard, Ashley and her new friend Kristi explore the neglected, forbidden area. When she and Kristi unearth an antique doll buried beneath one of the bushes, Ashley soon finds herself entangled in a ghostly past and its ties to the present. In evidence is Hahn's usual detail-oriented prose, which deftly sets the stage for intrigue; the author of Wait Till Helen Comes and other acclaimed books has created a captivating fantasy that explores friendship, grief and the interconnectedness of events in time. Ages 9-12. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 4-7-- A young girl helps her cantankerous elderly landlord to resolve a childhood act that caused the woman lifelong guilt. Ashley follows a white cat back in time and meets Louisa, a girl who is dying and who longs for her beloved doll--a doll that Ashley and her friend Kristi have found buried in Miss Cooper's garden. In the end Ashley, Kristi, and Miss Cooper visit Louisa; the woman is able to make am mends with her childhood friend, and Ashley begins to accept her father's death. Hahn's portrayal of crotchety Miss Cooper is expertly drawn, giving vivid insight into why she acts and lives as she does. Ashley, her widowed mother, and Kristi are also fully realized characters. When Hahn sticks to her story, it moves along at a steady, scary clip. However, when she lapses into lengthy descriptions of flowers, birds, and landscape, she slows the pace of the story rather than creates the intended atmosphere. Ashley's first-person narrative often gets bogged down in a flowery adult voice, particularly in the descriptions: ``As still as the cherub behind me, I watched the leaves sway in the breeze. Sunlight and shadow mottled the ground, and the weeds whispered to themselves, lulling me like distant voices of children at play.'' Still, it's an imaginative ghost story, fairly predictable, but with a completely satisfying ending. --Trev Jones, ``School Library Journal'' (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A ghost cat leads ten-year-old Ashley through a hedge--and back to the time when her fiercely disagreeable old landlady was an unhappy child who committed a wrong she still regrets. Ashley and her newly widowed mother have just moved into Miss Cooper's upstairs apartment so that Mom can complete her dissertation. Despite Miss Cooper's unreasonable restrictions on her every move, Ashley manages to make friends with Kristi, a younger child next door; together, they explore the forbidden, overgrown garden and discover an old doll that is buried there. To her own surprise, Ashley feels compelled to take the doll for herself, hiding it from Kristi. Then the cat takes her next door, where she meets Louisa--a child who died of consumption in 1912--and learns that ""Carrie"" borrowed her beloved doll but never returned it. Carrie proves to be Miss Cooper, who--with the girls' help--is finally able to return the doll to her dear friend. Hahn uses her satisfyingly mysterious, spooky story to illuminate the interaction of people in the present: Ashley's abduction of the doll not only parallels the earlier one but is a manifestation of her unresolved grief; moreover, it is because Mom and Ashley have a healthy, loving relationship that each has tried to protect the other by keeping her grief to herself; the incident with the doll is the catalyst that causes them finally to confide in each other. Thoughtful, entertaining fare for the middle grades. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
