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Title details for A Slip of a Girl by Patricia Reilly Giff - Available

A Slip of a Girl

by Patricia Reilly Giff
Alana Kerr Collins
Audiobook
1 of 1 copy available
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1 of 1 copy available
For Anna, the family farm has always been home... but now things are changing. Anna's mother has died, and her older siblings have emigrated, leaving Anna and her father to care for a young sister with special needs. And even though their family has worked this land for years, they're in danger of losing it as poor crop yields leave them without money to pay their rent. When a violent encounter with the Lord's rent collector results in Anna and her father's arrest, all seems lost. But Anna sees her chance and bolts from the jailhouse. On the run, Anna must rely on her own inner strength to protect her sister—and try to find a way to save her family. Written in verse by a master of historical fiction, A Slip of a Girl is a poignant story of adversity, resilience, and self-determination that paints a haunting picture of the tensions in the Irish countryside in the early 1890s and the aftermath of the Great Famine.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    December 24, 2019

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781666556834
      • File size: 54544 KB
      • Duration: 01:53:37

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Publisher's Weekly

      June 24, 2019
      Giff loosely based the tenacious heroine of this profoundly moving novel on her great-grandmother, who was raised in the town in Ireland where the Drumlish Land War of 1881 took place. In taut free verse, the author writes in the voice of fiercely patriotic Anna Mallon, whose family is torn apart as tension mounts between English landlords and Irish tenants, who are forcibly evicted after failing to pay unfairly escalating rents. After three of Anna’s siblings depart in search of a better life in Brooklyn, her frail mother dies hours after beseeching Anna to read and to keep her baby sister Nuala safe. The girl honors both requests; she learns to read from the local schoolmaster and escapes, with Nuala in her arms, after English bailiffs arrest her for insubordination. Anna’s simultaneous desperation and determination are palpable as she carries Nuala for days, barefoot, cold, and near starvation, to reach the safe home of an elderly aunt. Archival photos illuminate the loss and injustice inflicted on the Irish, and Giff (Lily’s Crossing) brings Anna’s story to a triumphant close. Ages 10–14.

    • AudioFile Magazine
      Narrator Alana Kerr Collins's exquisite performance vividly brings this story to life. Patricia Reilly Giff's historical novel in verse uses sparse language to paint a heartbreaking picture of Ireland in the 1890s. Collins delivers Giff's eloquent language with heart as her Irish lilt becomes the voice of young Anna. We hear the loneliness in Anna's voice as her older brothers emigrate to America for a better life, her fear as she watches her mother weaken and fade, and her determination as she fights to keep what's left of home and family together. Like all good historical fiction, this story is firmly set in its era, Ireland's Great Famine, but its focus on the life of one girl and her family makes the history personal. N.E.M. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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