A slip of a girl

Patricia Reilly Giff

Book - 2019

"Set during the Irish Land Wars (1879-1882) this novel in verse follows Anna Mallon through a series of tragedies as her mother dies, older sibling immigrate to America, and she and her father and sister with special needs are about to be evicted from their farm"--

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Children's Room jFICTION/Giff Patricia Due Apr 9, 2024
Subjects
Genres
Historical fiction
Novels in verse
Published
New York : Holiday House [2019]
Language
English
Main Author
Patricia Reilly Giff (author)
Edition
First edition
Physical Description
233 pages : illustrations ; 22 cm
ISBN
9780823439553
Contents unavailable.
Review by Booklist Review

Anna Mallon has seen the potato blight destroy her family's crop again and watched her brothers leave Ireland for America. Her mother grows weak and dies, while the English earl's agents drive neighbors from their homes. Her sister Jane emigrates, leaving Anna, her little sister Nuala, and her father to carry on with little food and dwindling prospects. Though she wants nothing more than to remain in the home built by Mallon hands / four hundred years ago, Anna lashes out, throwing a rock at the earl's house. With Nuala, she flees toward a distant town, where they find refuge. Although the family's suffering recalls the plight of characters in Giff's Nory Ryan's Song (2000), who also endured the Great Hunger, this affecting novel ends differently, with an uprising against the English and Anna returning home to stay. An author's note comments on the Land War. Written in free verse, the story moves quickly, but the clarity of the writing and the images created leave strong impressions of the characters and settings. The subtly shifting emotional tenor of the narrative ranges from pensive to sorrowful and from desperate to hopeful. At intervals, archival photos offer windows into the time and place. A vivid, involving historical novel.--Carolyn Phelan Copyright 2010 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Giff loosely based the tenacious heroine of this profoundly moving novel on her great-grandmother, who was raised in the town in Ireland where the Drumlish Land War of 1881 took place. In taut free verse, the author writes in the voice of fiercely patriotic Anna Mallon, whose family is torn apart as tension mounts between English landlords and Irish tenants, who are forcibly evicted after failing to pay unfairly escalating rents. After three of Anna's siblings depart in search of a better life in Brooklyn, her frail mother dies hours after beseeching Anna to read and to keep her baby sister Nuala safe. The girl honors both requests; she learns to read from the local schoolmaster and escapes, with Nuala in her arms, after English bailiffs arrest her for insubordination. Anna's simultaneous desperation and determination are palpable as she carries Nuala for days, barefoot, cold, and near starvation, to reach the safe home of an elderly aunt. Archival photos illuminate the loss and injustice inflicted on the Irish, and Giff (Lily's Crossing) brings Anna's story to a triumphant close. Ages 10--14. (Aug.)

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Horn Book Review

In late-nineteenth-century Ireland, the Mallon family struggles to stay in their home and farm their landland now controlled by an English earl determined to evict them by raising rents and taxes. With her dying words, Mam entrusts her eldest daughter, Anna, to care for her sister Nuala (slow to speak, / slow to understand), their house, and the land. Helpless, hungry, and angry, Anna throws a rock at the earls manor house, breaks a window, and is arrested. She escapes, grabs Nuala, and travels for miles to find sanctuary with an aunt. Along the way, they encounter others evicted from their homes and desperate to survive. Through spare, elegant verse, Anna relates her struggles with the English, showing her humiliation (They drag us down, and push our faces into the mud. / Were trussed up / like spring lambs, / and shoved into their cart) and her resolve (The soldiers try to march / through us. / They point their bayonets. / But we stand firm). Giff employs small incidents, such as the carding of wool or Annas rationing potatoes, to create a substantial setting, while archival photographs sprinkled throughout link these moments to the conditions of the larger community and history. Appended with a glossary and an authors note describing Giffs Irish lineage. Betty Carter January/February 2020 p.88(c) Copyright 2020. 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

Young Anna narrates in lilting, free verse her trials, tribulations, and triumphs during the 1881 Land War in Drumlish, Ireland."Sounds," the first of 31 short chapters in the book's first section, starts with high drama. While outside pulling up chickweed for tea, Anna hears screams and a crashing sound. "Dust rises up: / the house of five girls / and a mam is gone. / They're forced out on the road, / maybe to starve." Readers soon learn that English aristocrats have seized Irish properties, feeling empowered to arbitrarily raise rents and raze dwellings. However, what compels further reading is an immediate bond with Anna. Giff has the rare gift of using few wordsbut exactly the right onesto evoke strong and varied images and feelings. Readers will be riveted as Anna tries her hardest to live up to her dying mam's requests: that Anna take care of her developmentally disabled little sister, Nuala; keep the family's home safe; and learn to read. There are several episodes of gripping suspense, including Anna and Nuala's fugitive flight to Aunt Ethna's house and encounters between a bailiff and a justifiably angry crowd. There are also tender and humorous moments. Traditional customs and language are woven into the tale as deftly as Aunt Ethna weaves at her loom. Despite the value attached to reading, it is a different skill that enables Anna to earn moneya welcome, realistic plot point. Characters all present white.Lovely. (glossary, photographs, author's note) (Historical verse fiction. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.