Skip to main content

The Warden's Daughter

Image
By

The Warden's Daughter
By Jerry Spinelli
Random House, 2017. Fiction.

Cammie O'Reilly's life has always been a little bit different. Most kids have backyards, she has the Women's Yard. Most kids have treehouses, she has The Tower. Most kids have mothers, she doesn't - yet. Her own mother was killed in an accident saving her life when she was just a baby, leaving her alone with her father, the prison warden. The summer Cammie turns thirteen, she decides to find herself a new mother to do all the motherly things she misses out on, and she picks Eloda Pupko - the prison trustee who acts as her housekeeper. As the summer goes by, Eloda resists the role of mother that Cammie tries to thrust on her, as Cammie's anger at her different life bubbles deeper and deeper.

The Warden's Daughter is a great historical fiction novel filled with really interesting (if not always likable) characters. Set in the same same fictional town as Manaic Magee, this book shows Jerry Spinelli at his best - which is very good. At times, Cammie can be a real pain and many readers will have trouble identifying with her actions, but this makes her character development more satisfying. This book is filled with very real emotion and tangible frustration in the midst of stretches of truly beautiful language. This book will likely strike a chord with more advanced middle graders.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dude, That's Rude! (Get Some Manners) by Pamela Espeland & Elizabeth Verdick

By
If there's one book today's kids need to read, it is Dude, That's Rude! (Get Some Manners) . The authors provide a fun format for teaching etiquette to children. They discuss proper behavior at home, at school, at other people's homes and in public places. The information is completely up-to-date with cellphone manners and netiquette included. Fun, cartoony illustrations are on practically every page giving the book great visual appeal. This book is perfect for boys and girls in the fourth grade or older. WARNING: Bodily functions are discussed.
Post a Comment
Read more

Faces of the Moon by Bob Crelin

By loo
Faces of the Moon by Bob Crelin Illustrated by Leslie Evans Charlesburg; 2009; unpaged Faces of the Moon is a short nonfiction book that describes the different phases of the moon and why the moon appears like it does on certain nights. This book is short and sweet so even the youngest of moon lovers will enjoy it. The layout is simplistic and easy to follow. I don’t know much about the moon so I found it very interesting.
Post a Comment
Read more

Review: The Factory

By
The Factory By Catherine Egan New York, NY : Scholastic Inc., 2025. Fiction. 306 pages.  Thirteen-year-old Asher Doyle has been invited to join the Factory, a secretive research facility in the desert which ostensibly extracts renewable energy from the electromagnetic fields of its young recruits. But Asher soon realizes something sinister is going on. Kids are getting sick. The adults who run the Factory seem to be keeping secrets. And the extraction process is not only painful and exhausting, but existentially troubling. Asher makes a handful of new friends who help him with an investigation that turns into a resistance, which turns into...a cliffhanger! The Factory is a page-turning sci-fi with multidimensional characters, an intriguing plot, and refreshingly straight-forward writing. Egan weaves in detail about climate crises and social unrest, making the story's dystopian setting feel rich and plausible. With its sophisticated themes and accessible storytelling, I would recomm...
Post a Comment
Read more