The Magic of Melwick Orchard

November 5, 2018
“There was no place for magic in a world where a six-year-old gets cancer,” states 12-year-old Isa, whose younger sister, Junie, was diagnosed five months earlier. The family of four had finally arrived in a town that they liked after many moves due to job transfers. With all the displacement, Isa relied on Junie as her only friend, and now Junie lives at the hospital. Their mother has fallen into a deep depression, and their father is always working to pay the mound of medical bills. Isa feels invisible around her family and resists letting anyone else get close to her; even her genuinely kind schoolmate Kira is “a major violation of my don’t-need-friends policy,” Isa says. One day, in the neighboring orchard, a tree sprouts a pair of shoes that Isa needs, then gives her cookies. Inspired by local myths, she wonders whether the trees can save her family. Caprara pens an emotional first novel about the fear that accompanies hope. The fragile relationship between the sisters is well drawn, and though the family’s life seems on the brink of blowing apart, Caprara skillfully shows that good things are quietly blossoming. Ages 8–14.

July 1, 2018
Isabel discovers an astonishing secret--one that has the power to change everything--about the old orchard next to her house.Narrator Isabel, known as Isa to her family, is 12, solitary, and somewhat angry. Her parents are so consumed by her 6-year-old sister Junie's battle with kidney cancer that they seem to have all but forgotten Isa, who feels invisible. And Isa misses the one person, Junie, who she has decided would be her only friend. Multiple moves (nine in her 12 years) have made Isa determined to protect herself from saying goodbye to friends when she is uprooted again. But now her family lives in a house, away from the city, for the first time. Melwick Orchard hadn't produced apples in years when Isa's family arrived, but an oddly behaved squirrel and a sapling that grows overnight into a luminous-barked, silvery-blue-leafed tree produce something special for Isa when she needs it most. Caprara's principal characters--all seem to be white--are likable, and the worries of a family caught up in overwhelming circumstances are sympathetically portrayed. Junie is a precocious wordsmith, and Isa's exuberant neighbor, Kira, becomes a friend to Isa just when she needs one. The magic in the orchard is low-key, charming, and convincing, and the happy ending, only partly dependent on magic, is equally believable.Warmhearted and compelling. (Fantasy. 8-11)

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