Spying on Miss Muller

April 3, 1995
A nostalgic look at life in a Belfast boarding school during WWII sweetens the impact of this heartfelt examination of the meaning of loyalty. Miss Muller, the language teacher whom all the girls once worshiped, is now the object of their suspicions. It's bad enough that she's German, but her furtive late-night walks seem to coincide with enemy air raids--could Miss Muller be a spy? Against her kinder instincts, the narrator, Jessie, gets caught up in her classmates' clandestine investigation. Also involved is Greta Ludowski, a vindictive Jewish refugee from Poland. Because Bunting makes such a persuasive case for looking below the surface, it's especially disturbing that the novel's one true villainess turns out to be Greta, whose single-minded, nearly cartoonish vengefulness (``You have no right to be in the company of decent people'') is almost glibly passed off as the result of her having ``been through too many horrors. Still, there is much to enjoy here, not least the boarding school ambience deftly conveyed in numerous quirky details (``The most embarrassing thing was to have a space between the top of your stockings and the elastic of your knickers,'' Jessie confides at one point). An author's note gives a clue to the authenticity of the atmosphere: Bunting herself attended a school in Belfast that ``strangely resembled'' the one here. Ages 9-13.

May 1, 1995
Gr 5-7-A story set in a Belfast boarding school during World War II. What starts out as a routine school story ends up as a sympathetic portrayal of the tensions and deep friendships formed under the pressure of communal living. Jessie and her close friends are suspicious of a half-German teacher who supervises their dormitory. Their suspicions about Miss Muller grow when they experience their first air raid on the same night that Jessie spots the woman going out late at night. The use of telling details defines the girls and the faculty members so that the fast-moving plot has an inevitability that rings true. The tension is relieved throughout with welcome threads of humor peaking with a scene in the air-raid shelter during which the girls and boys, who are usually kept firmly apart, find themselves in very close quarters indeed. This entry is a welcome addition to the growing list of books about children during the Second World War.-Amy Kellman, The Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh