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librarianryan 's review for:
Thornhill
by Pam Smy
I feel this book has been overhyped. For a while there every october people pulled it’s dark pages out and said it was the haunted house book middlergraders are craving. I heard everything from a middle grade version of House on Haunted HIll, to a shorter version of Rose Madder. Ummmmmm, I think not. To me this feels more like Flowers in the Attic by way of Brian Selznic without the incest.
Ella is a modern day girl (in 2017). Her mom is not in the picture and we don’t know why. He dad is gone on business a lot. Her story is told though shades of grey and black illustrations. She has moved in next door to the abandoned Thornhill home for girls, but there is a light in the attic that comes on at night. And Ella sees a girl walking the property. She is determined to learn more and make friends.
Mary’s story is told through her journal in 1982. It is not a happy story, but a story of a lonely little girl who is tortured by the other kids in her school. She has selective mutism, and can not voice that she is being picked up, even when house workers try to get her to make friends.
This is not a happy go lucky story. It’s a dark tale. Mary’s tale is horrible, and you want to take this child away and give her a better life. But that will never happen. Not then, not now. This is a tale of how a how came to be haunted. The author leaves many things to the reader's imagination. Like how exactly does Mary die. It alludes to it, but never comes out and says it.
The story is quite typical of adult haunted house stories. Even the ending, it can be seen in hundreds of stories and moves like those mentioned above.
Over the story is okay, but nothing big, nothing worth me obsessively telling others to read it. The art work is nice, but I think Selznic does better art mixing illustrated pages with word pages to tell a full story. Overall, I don't think this book will stand the test of time. I think it will be trotted out every Halloween until it falls apart, never to be replaced.
#BNFantasyChallenge #paranormal
#MountTBR
#NancyDrewChallenge #PARANORMAL
Ella is a modern day girl (in 2017). Her mom is not in the picture and we don’t know why. He dad is gone on business a lot. Her story is told though shades of grey and black illustrations. She has moved in next door to the abandoned Thornhill home for girls, but there is a light in the attic that comes on at night. And Ella sees a girl walking the property. She is determined to learn more and make friends.
Mary’s story is told through her journal in 1982. It is not a happy story, but a story of a lonely little girl who is tortured by the other kids in her school. She has selective mutism, and can not voice that she is being picked up, even when house workers try to get her to make friends.
This is not a happy go lucky story. It’s a dark tale. Mary’s tale is horrible, and you want to take this child away and give her a better life. But that will never happen. Not then, not now. This is a tale of how a how came to be haunted. The author leaves many things to the reader's imagination. Like how exactly does Mary die. It alludes to it, but never comes out and says it.
The story is quite typical of adult haunted house stories. Even the ending, it can be seen in hundreds of stories and moves like those mentioned above.
Over the story is okay, but nothing big, nothing worth me obsessively telling others to read it. The art work is nice, but I think Selznic does better art mixing illustrated pages with word pages to tell a full story. Overall, I don't think this book will stand the test of time. I think it will be trotted out every Halloween until it falls apart, never to be replaced.
#BNFantasyChallenge #paranormal
#MountTBR
#NancyDrewChallenge #PARANORMAL