The Warden's Daughter

Reviewed by: Jill O'Connor - Harriet Beecher Stowe Elementary School, Brunswick, Southern Maine Library District

Review Date: August 10, 2017

Review

Told in flashback by an 80-year-old narrator who has had time to reflect on what it meant to be the warden's daughter in Two Mills, Pennsylvania in the late 1950s, living upstairs from the prisoners. Cammie loses her mother to an accident with a milk truck when she is just a baby so it is her and the warden, a distant though loving character. Now, at 12, Cammie has the idea that one of the inmates, Eloda, who has the enviable position of housekeeper for the warden and his daughter, should be her substitute mother. The book is chock full of nostalgia with a "remember when" feel. Remember when children could ride their bikes all day and no one knew where they were...Remember when American Bandstand was the raciest show on television...Remember when an alleged murderer could show up at a prison that had a 12-year-old girl living upstairs and her friends would clamor for a peek or even an autograph. The story hits all of the right notes for the time, but it might be difficult to put it in the hands of a middle school reader today and have them get the nuances. Cammie is realistically written, with strengths and flaws, and her best friend Reggie and inmate Boo Boo are great supporting characters. Eloda hardly has a voice until the end when more is revealed than made sense, at least to this reader. Spinelli is a much-beloved author and the writing here is strong, as usual, but this book feels like something that he wrote with a long lens and while it is obvious that his heart was in the story, it might not resonate with readers today.

Overall Book Score: good