In Darkling Wood

Gr 5-8-When Alice's younger brother is summoned for heart transplant surgery, her mother sends her to stay with her paternal grandmother, Nell, a curmudgeonly woman she has never met. Learning to deal with prickly Nell is one more stress for Alice, added to her worries about her brother and her frustration with her father, who seems to be avoiding his family, including his estranged mother. Soon Alice discovers that her grandmother is a local pariah for planning to cut down three acres of trees on her property, the Darkling Wood. Wandering in the woods one day, she meets Flo, a young girl near her own age. Flo attempts to convince an unbelieving Alice that she must stop her grandmother from cutting down the woods or the resident fairies will take revenge. Interspersed throughout the narrative are letters from an unnamed young girl to her brother, who is serving in World War I, confiding that she has seen fairies in the woods behind their home. As Alice begins to feel the magic of the wood, she tries to unravel the past events that led to her father's alienation from his family. From the very first sentence, readers are caught up in the tapestry Carroll weaves, though the full picture is not revealed until the very last pages. This is a tale brimming with emotion and atmosphere. The pacing is deliberate-each thread of the tale is woven with care. VERDICT Absorbing and well written. Hand this to readers who enjoy fantasy, fairy tales, and magical realism.

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