Review by New York Times Review
"NO MOTHER IS finally buried until her child climbs out of the grave," Cammie O'Reilly, the protagonist of "The Warden's Daughter," says. But how can you profoundly miss a parent you never knew? And if you're looking everywhere for someone to be the mother you never had, will the world present an endless series of heartbreaking disappointments? Set mainly in 1959, in a small Pennsylvania town, this latest novel by Jerry Spinelli, the author of many books for young readers including the Newbery Medalwinning "Maniac Magee," explores these questions and many others with the flair of a master storyteller. Bookended by scenes of Cammie in the present, "The Warden's Daughter" looks back at a world where preteenage kids could ride bikes at all hours of the day and night without someone placing an Amber Alert. Yet this is also a community in which a man is arrested for killing a 16-year-old girl and dumping her body in the river. It's a singular town, while at the same time it's every place of the late 1950s - perhaps both simpler and more dangerous than today all at once. The murderer becomes a celebrity the moment he's taken to the local prison. It is here that Cammie, now 12 - she lost her mother to a tragic accident when she was just a baby - lives in an apartment above the castlelike jail with her father, the warden. It's a remarkable place to call home. Perhaps if there were a mother in the family, she would have insisted they inhabit more than a collection of rooms that look down over a walkway into the women's exercise yard. Yet there is something so forbidding and exotic about this space that a group of girls in Cammie's class show up uninvited (and later take to calling themselves the Jailbirds), vying to become tragedy tourists. The girl they seek to befriend, herself no stranger to tragedy, is prone to outbursts of anger and even goes out of her way looking for physical altercations. What Cammie so desperately wants, or believes she desperately needs, is someone to mother her. She's surrounded instead by a collection of characters who include a mysterious inmate named Eloda Pupko, who has been tasked with being the warden's housekeeper and is Cammie's "trustee"; a gregarious shoplifter named Boo Boo, who treats Cammie like a pet and reserves time every day to sit in the prison's quiet room for their visitation; a hyperactive, cap-gunfiring 5-year-old boy from the other side of town; a somewhat absent and vacant father; and a devoted best friend, Reggie, who is socially already in another world. Cammie is not, like the other inhabitants of the prison, officially serving time, of course, but like everyone around her, it seems, she has the potential to travel down a destructive path. She finds solace pedaling fast all over town on her bicycle. "You never smile!" she is told by Boo Boo, and her adult narrator voice admits, "I was not a happy person." Outside the prison walls, demonstrators pushing for the death penalty for the incarcerated killer carry signs that read NO MERCY. Is it any wonder Cammie longs for human contact, but punches a boy who likes her in the face? The final steam locomotives of an earlier era still chug through town, leaving their sooty remains, while on television the popular new show, "Bandstand," is shot in nearby Philadelphia. As it is turning Dick Clark into a household name and worldwide television impresario, the show has the kids spinning records and dancing in the streets. The teenager is being born in American culture - and on the page in "The Warden's Daughter." THE LAST PASSAGES of this novel read like a fever dream, with Cammie moving her story forward in leaps and bounds. Fame, good and bad fortune, friendship and mental illness all make their way into her narrative. While somewhat frustrating in the fitfulness of the storytelling, this book is never boring and never predictable. It is possible adults will respond to the material even more than children. But then again, if there are times the reader feels overwhelmed, well, maybe that's the point. If you live in a prison as the warden's daughter, you can come and go, because your father runs the place. But it takes something more to break free. HOLLY GOLDBERG SLOAN is a screenwriter and the author of books for children including, most recently, the middle-grade novel "Short."
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [January 1, 2017]
Review by Booklist Review
Most people would hate to call the Hancock County Prison home, but 12-year-old tomboy Cammie O'Reilly wouldn't have it any other way. As the warden's daughter, she lives in an apartment above the prison entrance with her father and has a commanding presence that's earned her the nickname Little Warden. Set in 1959, just before Cammie turns 13 and enters junior high, this is a story about facing hard truths and growing up. In the background swirl issues of race, treatment of prisoners, and the arrival of a high-profile murderer, but Cammie's mounting anger over her mother's tragic death takes center stage. Spinelli's latest gives readers an interesting, often heartbreaking glimpse into the 1950s and the timeless need for a parent's love. Narrated by Cammie as an adult, the carefully constructed story seems a little too neat and purposeful at times, but readers will love the details of having a prison compound for a home and adore the many secondary characters who help keep Cammie's head above water during her desperate search for happiness.--Smith, Julia Copyright 2016 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
The latest from Newbery medalist Spinelli is a coming-of-age story set in Two Mills, Pa. The story opens with the protagonist Cammie O'Reilly, an elderly grandmother, remembering the summer of 1959, when she was 12 and lived with her father in a house adjacent to the Hancock County Prison, where he was the prison warden. The summer was emotionally treacherous for young Cammie, who was just coming to terms with her mother's death. She spent the dog days inside the prison gates passing the time with the women inmates. Actor MacDuffie performs the first-person retrospective narrative in a soothing but straightforward manner, letting Spinelli's masterful prose take center stage. When the story takes a tragic turn, MacDuffie adds due emotion to her otherwise calm reading, which makes for a powerful ending. Ages 9-12. A Knopf hardcover. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-In 2017, Cammie O'Reilly is an elderly grandmother visiting her childhood home with her 12-year-old granddaughter after half a century away. While the outside still looks like the same "fortress from the Middle Ages," the inside now houses birds, butterflies, and turtles rather than the 200-plus inmates of the Hancock County Prison-where Cammie; her widowed father, the warden; and their prisoner-cum-housekeeper Eloda once lived. In the summer of 1959, when Cammie was about to turn 13, her search for a mother figure became desperate as she looked to Eloda, a storytelling inmate and another child's mother, for maternal connection. Amid American Bandstand, hidden cigarette packs, and visits to the prison yard, Cammie comes of age, saved by the kindness of strangers. Carrington MacDuffie is a fine narrator as the grandmother; although the more mature-voiced casting seems initially obvious, because the vast majority of the narrative belongs to a 12-year-old, MacDuffie's older characterization ultimately feels miscast as young Cammie's story progresses. VERDICT Libraries will likely be better suited to recommending Spinelli's latest on the printed page. ["Sentimental and reflective, this nostalgic story will strike a deeper chord in adults than in middle graders": SLJ 11/16 review of the Knopf book.]-Terry Hong, Smithsonian BookDragon, Washington, DC © Copyright 2017. 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 Horn Book Review
It's 1959, and Camille, a lively, determined, self-described tomboy, is twelve. She lives in a suite inside a prison where her father is the warden. Spinelli makes the most of this distinctive setting as Camille becomes a kind of mascot or pet for the female inmates, has access to historical criminal records, and gains status at school when it is presumed she has inside information on crime and criminals. The driver of the story is Camille's hunger for a mother to substitute for her own, who died in an accident when Camille was just a baby. It's a busy, multi-strand plot, including a mystery from the past, Cammie's growing friendship with a family from the wrong side of the tracks, a framing story involving Cassie as a grandmother looking back ("But now, more than half a century later"), a friend who gets to appear on Bandstand, and a re-spin of the plot in diary form from the housekeeper/mother-substitute's point of view. Spinelli's gift for humorous chaos and his trademark magic realism touches are showcased here, and it is exhilarating to read about kids with so much freedom, but Cammie and her female friends don't always ring true. For example, discussing Cammie's flat chest, they come up with three solutions: stuffing her sweater with a pair of socks, holding her breath to make her breasts pop out, and refraining from going to the bathroom for the same effect. This is a good joke, but it sounds more like one a boy might make. Without a convincing main character, the complicated narrative structure doesn't cohere. sarah ellis (c) Copyright 2017. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Perpetually angry, motherless Cammie OReilly, the wardens daughter, sets about turning Eloda Pupko, the silent, distant trustee working as Cammie-keeper, into a mother figure over the summer she turns 13. Set in 1959 in the Two Mills, Pennsylvania, of Spinelli's own childhood, this is firmly grounded in its time and place and full of details of life at Hancock County Prison. Cammies essential compassion shows in her willingness to spend time with all the incarcerated women, her particular affection for Boo Boo, a large, ebullient black woman who befriends the sad white child, and her disgust at best friend Reggie's admiration for their most famous inmate, a murderer. Reggie lusts for fame herself; one highlight of the summer is her appearance on the TV show Bandstandwatched and loudly applauded by a gang of rising Two Mills seventh-graders who are the friends who move into Cammies life without any apparent effort and who are firmly ejected as Cammies spiral into depressions depths approaches its climax. Cammie tells her own story chronologically, until its whirlwind crest; she frames it with scenes from the present. Its a tapestry of grief and redemption, woven by a master storyteller who never loses his focus on Cammies personal journey but connects it to Elodas in a powerful twist. Moving and memorable. (Historical fiction. 9-12) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
