Anne Ursu

Middle schooler Violet's dad left when she was three, and when her older sister Mia was in middle school, she underwent a personality change and now wants nothing to do with Violet. Now, the family - Violet, Mia, their little brother Owen, their mom, and their stepdad Eliot - is moving into a new house that will fit their new family, and Violet gets stuck with the creepy attic bedroom, with its ugly, scary wallpaper.

This would be plenty, but then Violet's best friends Paige and Ally insist show more they need to expand their friend group to have a "squad," and Paige's desire to impress Kennedy causes her to be a bad friend to Violet, despite their pod-mate history (during COVID, Violet, Paige, and Ally were in a pod together, in first grade). Then Violet gets sick - and doesn't get better. And one doctor and then another doesn't believe her. And, there seems to be something in the wallpaper that is trying to get out - something that wants to take over Violet's body, no matter how broken it is.

Violet has a few things on her side: a cat, Trixie, who materializes on moving day and can sense the ghost; her loving little brother; her mom and stepdad, who love her and believe her; even Mia is willing to call people buttheads if they're mean to Violet. And, there's Will, a new kid at school who has been homeschooled before and is doing a project on ghosts in Minnesota. Violet starts to help him with his project, and they become friends - and it's one of his dads, a pediatrician, who ultimately promises hope for Violet...after she has dealt with the thing in her walls all by herself.

A mysterious, chronic illness that doesn't appear on lab reports fits perfectly into the horror genre, despite being perfectly real: it's isolating, terrifying, uncontrollable and unpredictable. The ghost (or not quite a ghost) layer on top of that increases the tension and fear. We never do get the ghost's story; it's gone, and that's the important thing.

Sad and unsettling, but ultimately hopeful on multiple fronts: the ghost is gone, Violet is getting appropriate medical help, and although she's lost Paige and Ally, Quinn and Kennedy want to be friends, and Will already is.

See also: Wait Till Helen Comes by Mary Downing Hahn; "The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Quotes

...but change was not bad, necessarily, not if you looked at it like an adventure. And if you pretended you were the sort of person who liked adventures. (4)

"It's just the patriarchy....the system that keeps girls so worried about their appearances that they don't use their brain power to take over the world." (Quinn, 106)

It was hard to fix something when you didn't know what had broken. (135)

"I believe the people who have experiences that can't be explained." (Will, 141)

It was hard. There was so much going on, and yet it felt like nothing at all. She was so tired. She hurt....it was like the world had turned to near-solid goo and she still had to move through it, like the air was trying to crush her from every direction, like her body was made of weights, like some vacuum had sucked most of the life out of her. Like she was broken. (174)

No one understood....And if no one understood, no one would be able to help. She was alone. (183)

...at least up here, she could have feelings without worrying about anyone else's feelings. (189)

Nobody could [understand]. They could not feel what she was feeling, could not know what it was to be in this body.
And so, she was alone.
The truth of it pressed against her so hard, it felt like she might drown in the couch. She was alone, and she was sick, and she was haunted, and there was nothing she could do about any of it. (223)

"You have to understand that some people are the kinds that leave. There's nothing any of us can do about that. We just need to find the kind of people who stay." (Violet's mom, 269) show less

This is a delightful story with a plot set in the context of magical adventure. The story has great originality in carrying a subtle feminist theme underpinning a novel written for the Middle-Grade crowd. It can also be a compelling tale for adults who enjoy reading about young people discovering their capabilities, learning the wisdom of critically examining the pronouncements by those in charge of their schooling, and overcoming the dysfunctional aspects of a society holding them back. show more

Marya is an engaging female protagonist, downtrodden and undervalued by unlikable parents. Sisters with pesky, overindulged brothers will especially appreciate her trials as a twelve-year-old on the brink of becoming a young adult and discovering her talents. Her sibling rivalries with Luka will especially resonate for girls who feel overlooked in their own lives. The family dynamics were well-drawn by Author Ursu.

An especially endearing supporting character for Marya is the mother in her neighbouring family. Lucille Bandu is a master weaver and exquisite embroiderer. She carries an aura of affection and safety for Marya and strives to show her that she does have value and opportunities. From Madame Bandu, Marya learns many new ideas along with learning to read: the secrets woven into tapestries, the strength to follow your own insights and, to trust yourself to know when the people around you "speak pretty words, with hidden meanings". She learns, when an adult in charge proclaims a suspect truth that she ask herself the question: "Who does the story serve?" show less

This was one of the most stressful middle grade books I've ever read. I worried so much for Marya and the other girls at the academy, and in fact, all the girls in their fictional fantasy country. I really thought it was going to turn into a series, because I thought the issues in the book were so incredibly large that they could not possibly resolve them all by the end of this book. And they weren't all resolved, but things surprisingly went in a better direction than I'd anticipated, and show more while there turned out not to be a setup for one, I would definitely read sequels! show less

Hazel Anderson's friend Jack stops talking to her, and then he disappears. Hazel and Jack have been best friends for years, through Hazel's parents' divorce and Jack's mom's depression, and they have created refuge for themselves and each other with their fantastic imaginations. When Jack goes missing, Hazel goes after him: the princess on a quest to rescue the prince. But from whom is she rescuing him? And does he want to be rescued?

This is a magical, delightful book that seemed to be over show more before it began - but now I'm eager to read more of the author's work. Breadcrumbs owes a lot to the children's/YA fantasy canon (C.S. Lewis' Narnia, J.K. Rowling's Hogwarts, Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy, Neil Gaiman's Coraline, and a whole slew of fairy tales and mythology), and it tips its hat to all of these with elegance and a sense of humor.

Quotes

People were always doing this sort of thing to Hazel. Nobody could accept that she did not want to hear [scientific explanations]...The truth of things was always much more mundane than what she could imagine, and she did not understand why people always wanted to replace the marvelous things in her head with this miserable heap of you're-a-fifth-grader-now facts. (3)

This is what happens on journeys - the things you find are not necessarily the things you had gone looking for. (235)

Maybe she didn't belong anywhere else because she belonged here. (236)

She had believed that because someone needed saving they were savable. (247) show less