I’ve heard nothing but good about this one, by Laura Amy Schlitz. I liked the Newbery winner she wrote, and so I figured with those two recommendations, I couldn’t go wrong with this one.

Thankfully, I was right. I loved this little story. Schlitz deftly weaves a bit of mystery, some beautiful scenery and a lot of longing into a not-so-traditional orphan story. Wonderful.

Maud, an 11-years-old orphan, is singing in the outhouse of Barbary Asylum on the best day of her life: the day that Hyacinth Hawthorne decides that it’s Maud she wants to adopt. She has always longed for a home, or at least ever since she was 5 and someone adopted her older brother and younger sister and not her. She goes home with Hyacinth, meets her two sisters Judith and Victoria, and then discovers that she’s to play a part in the “family business”. She makes the best of it, vying for Hyacinth’s attention and affection, and eventually finds happiness in the bargain.

That’s a terrible plot summary, but I don’t know how to do the book justice while not giving too much away. I loved Maud as a character: feisty and spunky yet with so much longing to be loved it made my heart break. I thought it was an interesting look at family and death and separation and surviving… and so much. I liked the relationship that Maud had with Muffet (the deaf house maid in the Hawthorne home); how Maud came to understand Muffet and how their relationship developed. I really liked the ending, even though I saw it coming. I thought it was just perfect, and very satisfying.

M’s only quibble with the book was the subtitle: A Melodrama. She finished the book and said that it didn’t really read like a melodrama (or at least how Hubby defined a melodrama to her). (My only quibble is that Schlitz seems to like colons in her titles. They all have one.) According to trusty old Webster, a melodrama can mean both “a work characterized by extravagant theatricallity and by the predominance of plot and physical action over characterization” (doesn’t quite fit) or something “appealing to the emotions” (fits better). Maybe M’s right: it’s not quite a melodrama (though I think it was melodramatic at some parts). But it is a really wonderful book.