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Loading... Behind the Attic Wall (1983)by Sylvia Cassedy
When orphaned Maggie is kicked out of yet another school, she is shipped off to live with her two old, stern aunts. In a hidden room, she discovers a pair of dirty old dolls and their dogs. To her surprise, these dolls can talk and walk about the room. Over time, she slowly develops a relationship with them and finds that in caring for them, she improves herself. This odd little book was one of my absolute favorites as a child. I read it so much, the paperback cover is nearly worn off. I re-read it a few years ago and it still held up -- it's just as I remember it in character, plot, and its very own brand of enchantment. (  ) sweetiegherkin | Oct 16, 2010 |  Lonely, sullen Maggie goes to live with her stern, elderly aunts in a big old spooky house that used to be an orphanage. She only has imaginary friends- a handful of unintelligent girls she secretly bosses around. Until one day she begins to hear voices, and finds a hidden room in the attic- where a pair of china dolls appears to have been waiting for her. In her initial shock she avoids the room, but then returns and soon finds herself going there day after day, keeping company with the prim doll couple and their little china dog, opening her heart to care for something, and at the same time solving a little mystery about the orphanage's past. Even though Maggie isn't a very pleasant character at first, there's something about her that warms to the reader- her stubborn tenacity and slowly unfolding tenderness. It's a solemn kind of story, and rather sad; one that's hard to forget. from the DogEar Diary (  ) jeane | Oct 23, 2009 | This book enchanted me at just the right age, when my childhood enchantment with the world was starting to fade. It made me believe in the power of the imagination once again, and most probably saved me from turning down too realistic a road in my philosophy on life. I know that sounds like a lot of importance to give a simple book like this, but it truly was the right book at the right time. I'm convinced that my imagination and creativity are very much alive today as a result of having read this book 15 years ago. (  ) ChiaraBeth | Oct 9, 2009 | I loved this book. The cover is an accurate portrayal of the punchline - Orphan Maggie always feels like a ghost at all the boarding schools she has been sent to. When she gets sent to live with her great aunts at a now defunct boarding school, she finds real ghosts - and they become her dearest friends. (  ) BridgetMarie | Jul 8, 2009 | From Amazon The character of Maggie is a vivid portrait of a child traumatized by loss. The other characters are more two-dimensional. The uncle is nearly incapable of making any sort of straightforward reply to anything. At first it seems he is trying to jolly Maggie out of her depression but it just gets tedious after a while. The dolls are of a similar ilk. And yet this story went straight to my heart. The child alone and at the mercy of everyone and everything, unloved, unwanted, and neglected desperately wants to belong, to be loved, to be needed and wanted. But she gets only the merest taste of what she so badly needs before being torn from it and sent away. ( ) bpetry | May 6, 2009 | no reviews | add a review
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They were watching...and waiting
At twelve, Maggie had been thrown out of more boarding schools than she cared to remember. "Impossible to handle," they said -- nasty, mean, disobedient, rebellious, thieving -- anything they could say to explain why she must be removed from the school.
Maggie was thin and pale, with shabby clothes and stringy hair, when she arrived at her new home. "It was a mistake to bring her here," said Maggie's great-aunts, whose huge stone house looked like another boarding school -- or a prison. But they took her in anyway. After all, aside from Uncle Morris, they were Maggie's only living relatives.
But from behind the closet door in the great and gloomy house, Maggie hears the faint whisperings, the beckoning voices. And in the forbidding house of her ancestors, Maggie finds magic...the kind that lets her, for the first time, love and be loved.
(retrieved from Amazon Tue, 19 Apr 2011 12:59:19 -0400)
In the bleak, forbidding house of her great-aunts, neglected twelve-year-old orphan Maggie hears ghostly voices and finds magic that awakens in her the capacity to love and be loved.
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