A review by rachelb36
Behind the Attic Wall by Sylvia Cassedy

4.0

This was an amusing and suspenseful read about a young orphan girl who is kicked out of every school and foster home she has attended and so is sent to live with two elderly aunts in a former boarding school. She knows something is not quite right in this new home, and that feeling grows stronger when she begins to hear voices coming from inside the walls...

Uncle Morris was a fun character who said silly things like, "Would you like to wear your coat while I hang it up? Or would you prefer to remove it first?" (p 22) and we all got a kick out of the Backwoods Girls, introduced on page 44:

[Maggie] was a caretaker in her game, a caretaker of five imaginary girls, the Backwoods Girls she called them, all poorer, younger, dirtier, and uglier than she was herself. And dumber. They were all newly arrived from some unknown backwoods, and they knew nothing, nothing at all, of the ordinary things surrounding Maggie's life - of toothbrushes, even, or dresser drawers, and it was Maggie's job to explain things to them.

I felt the writing became repetitive here and there, but my nieces (ages 10, 8, 7) didn't notice or care. We all really enjoyed it!