By Joy McCullough
Amazon rating: 4.6/5, grades 5-6
Good Reads: 4.09/5
Common Sense Media: Not reviewed
4Rbooks: 5/6, grades 6-8
276 pages
Synopsis:
12-year-old Callie (short of Calliope) and her family move to Scotland to live in a castle her mom and dad inherited from the owner. Though a long way from San Diego, California where they lived, Callie is excited to move. It will give her the chance for a fresh start with new friends and adventures after losing her best friends back home who abandoned her after a disagreement.
Unfortunately, the castle is cold, dusty and in need of major repair. While her parents begin the work of remodeling the castle to become a tourist destination, Callie finds that fitting in and making new friends isn’t easy in Scotland either. Her parents agree to let her be homeschooled for a semester if she takes up a social activity. She becomes interested in bird watching, or twitching as they say in Scotland, because of the diary she found belonging to the Lady Phillipa, the owner who had left the castle to her parents.
Callie slowly becomes friends with the town librarian Esme, and then also the granddaughter of the groundskeeper, Sid (short for Cressida). She also learns there is sexism in the bird watching club and bird watching competitions. Sid and Callie become a team to face off against the boy birdwatchers in a tournament held on the castle grounds. Through the competition and a personal dilemma for Sid, they both learn they belong to a bigger flock than they realized.
Parental Guidance: mild
A couple of times Callie is described as using words she never would around
her parents. The words are never detailed.
The major disagreement with her friends in San Diego was over the girls
sneaking out to try and join a group of high school boys at an end of
the school year beach party. Callie is reluctant but goes with the other girls.
Sid lives with her grandfather because her mom had a problem with alcohol
and was eventually killed in a car crash when Sid was very young.
Excerpts from the diary are included. It is 1939 and Phillipa has been sent
to avoid the dangers of WWII. She is living with a single woman who has agreed
to take her, and four other girls into her farmhouse. She worries about her
brother going off to war, as does one of the other girls who has three brothers in
the war, the only family she has left.
Recommendation:
This was a very good book and I enjoyed reading it. While I think anyone could enjoy the story, it might have a limited audience. I joked with my wife that this was a great story for the young woman who would grow up to be a watcher of BBC shows on PBS. The story is about relationships, Scottish castles, and birds/bird watching. The descriptions of the area can make you long for a vacation to the UK, and the details about “twitching” might send you outside to look at the birds.
It’s also a good book for readers who don’t always feel like they fit in. Callie, a voracious reader, makes many references to other famous books like The Secret Garden and the Chronicles of Narnia. Esme is a terrific character as the librarian who shares Callie’s love of books.
While the friendship beak-up in San Diego played out a little like an ABC after school special (I’m aging myself here, I know), I appreciated that it was handled with care. Nothing bad happened to the girls, and realizing how uncomfortable she was with the situation, high school girl who is there comes to Callie’s rescue. The girl has Callie call home to be picked up by her mom and stays with her until her mom comes. She also encourages her and tells her how brave and smart she is to know that this isn’t a good place for her and her friends.
I think this is an appropriate book for middle school readers. A 4th or 5th grader could enjoy it too, but with parent guidance. The beach scene could be an excellent starting point for conversations about peer pressure and making wise decisions.
Comments