September 1, 2017
Gr 5-8-A time-traveling twist is used to explore mother-daughter relationships and family secrets. Annie Jarvis doesn't understand her mother. Annie lives for art and doesn't like school, while her mother has always been studious and serious. A painting Annie finds in the attic and her mother's lapse into a coma after a car accident set the scene for discovery. Quotes from Alice in Wonderland open each section of this novel. Instead of Alice's rabbit hole, Annie from Toronto falls into paintings from the past by the famous Newfoundland artist Maisie King soon after her mother's accident. While in the paintings, Annie meets Claire, a girl mourning the death of her younger sister, coincidentally (or not) named Annie. Claire believes Annie is the ghost of her deceased sibling. Claire blames herself for her sister's death and thinks her mother blames her as well. Readers will intentionally be ahead of the plot, surmising that Claire must be Annie's mother, Cathleen, before it is disclosed. Once Annie discovers that Maisie King is her grandmother and that little Annie's death has torn the family apart, she believes repairing her mother and grandmother's relationship is the key to her mother's recovery. Claire and Annie alternate narrating chapters, revealing the family saga in the past and present and ultimately resulting in a happy ending. VERDICT A sweet family relationship tale with a paranormal twist. Recommended for additional purchase in large collections, especially where there is local or regional interest.-Cindy Wall, Southington Library & Museum, CT
Copyright 2017 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.
August 1, 2017
The painting of a Newfoundland lighthouse that Annie finds in her attic becomes a portal to the place itself and the lonely girl who lives there. Claire, 12, white, a serious student and avid reader, lives with her mother, Maisie, a fiercely self-sufficient painter, in an old lighthouse on the coast of Newfoundland. Claire longs to move back to their home in St. John's, where her younger sister died. Annie, also 12, white, and a gifted artist, lives in Toronto with her accomplished parents. The night her mother is injured in a car accident Annie finds herself falling into the real world of the lighthouse, where Claire immediately recognizes her as an older version of her sister, Annie. Claire blames herself for young Annie's death and believes that her mother does, too. Alternating subchapters in Claire's and Annie's voices weave a cleverly constructed, compellingly paced mystery that's part time-slip story, part ghost story, part meditation on the power of dreaming. Epigraphs drawn from Through the Looking Glass and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland about the nature of dreams and reality preface each of the nine chapters. As Annie begins to realize who she and Claire might be to each other, Claire and Maisie clash over a series of portraits imagining the young Annie growing older. Full of emotional truth and connection. (Fantasy. 9-13)
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January 1, 2018
In alternating points of view, twelve-year-olds Annie and Claire tell a story in which a painting Annie rescues from the attic allows her to time-travel from her home in 2004 Toronto to Claire's in a remote lighthouse in 1970s Newfoundland. It's a disorienting read at first, as it's evident that there are connections between the girls' lives, but the nature of those connections isn't immediately clear. Claire had a sister named Annie, who was fatally struck by a car at age four while Claire was supposed to be watching her, but narrator Annie is fairly certain she isn't a ghost; in Annie's thread, her mother is in a coma after her own serious car accident. Tales of portals between times and realities are plentiful, and in fact the section epigraphs and other references acknowledge a debt to Lewis Carroll, but this story is unusual enough to eschew predictability. It's satisfying to see the pieces come together, but that's only half the story, especially since much of the mystery is cleared up within the first hundred pages. The emotional tale intertwined with the fantasy--involving guilt, grief, and Claire's charged relationship with her artist mother--makes the puzzle all the more meaningful. shoshana flax
(Copyright 2018 by The Horn Book, Incorporated, Boston. All rights reserved.)