A Slip of a Girl

June 24, 2019
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.

Narrator Alana Kerr Collins's exquisite performance vividly brings this story to life. Patricia Reilly Giff's historical novel in verse uses sparse language to paint a heartbreaking picture of Ireland in the 1890s. Collins delivers Giff's eloquent language with heart as her Irish lilt becomes the voice of young Anna. We hear the loneliness in Anna's voice as her older brothers emigrate to America for a better life, her fear as she watches her mother weaken and fade, and her determination as she fights to keep what's left of home and family together. Like all good historical fiction, this story is firmly set in its era, Ireland's Great Famine, but its focus on the life of one girl and her family makes the history personal. N.E.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award � AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine