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Behind the Attic Wall by Sylvia Cassedy
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Behind the Attic Wall

by Sylvia Cassedy

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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 |
A little odd. I really like Uncle Morris. ( )
  esthella | Mar 26, 2009 |
This is a great book about an orphan who goes to live with two aunts and finds friends in a group of dolls who live in a secret room in the house.
  irishmomjeanne | Nov 21, 2008 |
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Epigraph
Dedication
for Michael and Timothy
First words
Today was the Anniversary: May fourteenth. (Prologue)
The man waiting at the station when she first stepped off the train was the tallest person she had ever seen.
Quotations
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(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)
Disambiguation notice
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Wikipedia in English (1)

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2007 December 14

Book description
Maggie is twelve and hasn't felt truly loved since the death of her parents years before. In the home of her great-aunts, she finds a mysterious separate home where she makes friends and comes to care for the people she finds there. Deliciously mysterious and simultaneously heart-wrenching, this story is actually told as a flashback from the time when Maggie has been adopted into a family with two little sisters.

A quiet read, more for independent readers than for a group. Good for those YA/teen readers who enjoy sci-fi or fantasy, due to the magical time slip that makes the story possible.

Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0380698439, Paperback)

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 Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:08 -0400)

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