Margaret and the Moth Tree

happymoon - This is a very popular book, and an amazing one too. Margaret is a girl orphan whose parents died when she was very young. She was forced to live in her uncle's house, and she learned how to listen there. She didn't just pay attention, she listened so well that she could her mice talking in walls, tree leaves rustling outside. If she listened hard enough, she could even hear the sun's rays. Margaret was living a sorrow, quiet life, until her uncle died and she moved to the orphanage. The orphanage seemed like a safe haven for Margaret at a first glance. Children playing, wonderful food and luxuries beyond your dreams. The secret was, as soon as a guest left, the whole orphanage was "switched". Ms. Switch, the orphanage's master is a cruel, terrible woman who hurts children all she wants. Leaving girls out in lightning storms, pushing kids out windows and much more. Margaret is forced into silence once more, until her hearing abilities work again. She meets the moths outside in a tree behind the orphanage. Margaret meets Pip, and they become the best of friends. Margaret finds peace with the moths, and she learns their ways. Then, when things at the orphanage go out of control Margaret and the moths hatch a plan to make Ms.Switch surrender…and more to happen. Funny, tragic and sorrow, this book will make you feel like there's a world out there, much different from the one your in. This novel is carefully planned out and will blow your mind. It will make you truly see into characters' pasts, and make you learn to listen.

February 15, 2012
A tale that starts badly and ends more or less well, with an underpinning of dubious philosophy and a shrill, "now I shall teach you" voice. It begins with the idea that good people should be beautiful, and bad people should be ugly ("scraggly hair and warty noses") so the one can be told from the other. Plain, orphaned Margaret has fetched up at the Hopeton orphanage. While the beautiful Miss Switch is all maternal glow when Margaret arrives at what the moths of the titular tree call the "orfallidge," all the loveliness vanishes as soon as the guests do. The children are tormented and ill-fed, divided into "dregs" and "Pets." This Dahl-esque scenario gives the omniscient narrator a platform from which to lecture readers about bullies, those who care only for appearances and so on. Margaret, however, used to silence, learns to hear the voices of the moths and learns they love to eat Nimblers, which are the gossamer stuff of dreams. Of course, the current Nimblers are bitter, because the orphans' dreams are so sad. Margaret and the moths overcome, but not before there are such horrors as a child's long thick braid being cut off in a fit of Miss Switch's pique. While possibly reaching for a bit of Lemony Snicket's basket of queasy joy, this falls very flat. (Fantasy. 8-12)

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April 1, 2012

Gr 3-6-A charming story of magical realism. Margaret lives in an orphanage run by cruel, imperious Miss Switch. When the other orphans are barred from speaking to her, she finds escape with a group of moths whose voices only she can hear. Both Miss Switch's excessive abuses against the children (forbidding a boy from sleeping, making a girl stand on a building ledge) and Margaret's use of magic (the moths) to retaliate evoke the events in Roald Dahl's Matilda (Viking, 1988). Well-sketched characters and short chapters that often end on ambiguous notes will engage readers. While period and setting are left vague, the narrator's elegant asides and wry commentary imbue the novel with an old-fashioned air reminiscent of Lemony Snicket's "A Series of Unfortunate Events" (HarperCollins). Though the moths are positively filled to the brim with quirky traits (Rimblewisp and Pipperflit play games like Billabump and feast upon dreams that they call Nimblers), their scenes tend to drag, especially compared with the action at the orphanage. The power of physical beauty is a strong motif throughout; for example, the beautiful but evil Miss Switch divides the residents into two groups-the pretty, favored Pets and the unattractive Dregs, who are given the lion's share of the work. However, this theme is instilled with enough nuance to escape cliche. The Trogens breathe new life into the old trope of the plucky orphan in dire straits.-Mahnaz Dar, formerly at Convent of the Sacred Heart, New York City

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