By Christine McFaul
Content warning: death of a child
The Girl from the Attic (2020) is an engaging middle grade time travel novel written by Canadian author Marie Prins.
Everything in twelve-year-old Maddy’s life is changing. She has a new stepfather that she doesn’t get along with, a baby sibling on the way that she’ll probably get stuck looking after, and now her parents are moving her away from her life (and internet connection) in Toronto and into a crumbling octagonal house in the middle of nowhere. Needless to say, Maddy is less than impressed. And no amount of her parents geeking out over the historical aspects of their new home will change her mind. Maddy can’t imagine why her parents are so enamoured with a house that looks like a huge mouldy cupcake until a chance encounter with a mysterious cat leads her to a hidden door in the attic—a door that allows Maddy to step back over a hundred years into the past. There she meets Clare and Eva and begins to finally understand what makes the octagonal house so special.
In Maddy, Prins has created a lovable and highly relatable character with a great middle grade voice. The story grabs readers from the first page and does not slow down, expertly balancing historical elements, modern day troubles, and just the right amount of magic to bring it all together. A number of lovely black and white illustrations by the author’s husband are scattered through the book, cleverly chosen to help young readers (or book reviewers who didn’t pay enough attention during history class!) to visualize scenes from the past, for example a floor plan of the octagonal house from 1904 or what the inside of a soap mill looked like.
The Girl from the Attic is a lovely story. The characters are engaging, the historical elements are informative without feeling didactic, and it has the added bonus of being set here in Canada (Scarborough and Colebrook). A great choice for sparking a love of history in readers both young and old, for use in the classroom, or just to read for pleasure.
Note: Marie Prins wrote a lovely piece titled “Grammy’s Mittens” that can be found in Volume Three of Cloud Lake Literary. So, if your interest in her work was piqued by this review, be sure to check it out!
Thank you to both Marie Prins and Commondeer Press for the complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.