Marvelous Middle Grade Monday
Cuckoo Song (Amulet Books, 2014) by Frances Hardinge is a creepily good book.
Triss wakes up feeling very strange. Her parents tell her she was in an accident. But she doesn’t remember a thing. Though maybe it has something to do with her younger sister Pen who is often not very nice. The one thing that Triss does know is that she’s ravenously hungry–all the time. And then there’s the dolls that talk to her. And scream. A voice in her head is also giving Triss a countdown from seven. In spite of being told to stay in bed to recover, Triss must find out what’s going on, and sneaks away from her house.
Spoiler alert: The author uses scary dolls and the changeling idea in this story.
Cuckoo Song won the Robert Holdstock Award for Best Novel at the British Fantasy Awards 2015.
Read about Frances here and check out her numerous books here. Previously, I recommended one of her later books, A Face Like Glass.
Seems a little scary for kids…but some kids like this.
They do. I personally wouldn’t want to watch it as a movie but can handle it written.
Follow this GoodReads link if you want to see a different cover image for this book.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/25524546-cuckoo-song
Yeah. I just can’t do scary books. The cover scared me. But I’m sure lots of others will like it. Thanks for telling me about it.
I had lots of sympathy for the main character, despite the story being freaky.