The Ogress and the Orphans

There is an Ogress living in a crooked house past the last of the houses, and Kelly Barnhill's The Ogress and the Orphans is a fairy tale for 10 year olds about the neighbours who decide she must be the problem.

What happens

Stone-in-the-Glen used to be lovely. Fruit trees along the streets that anybody could pick from. Glass lamps polished by hand. A library at the end of every road, with deep cushions and librarians whose shushes were lovely.

Then the library burned down, and the town never really recovered. The trees died. The floods came. Fences went up, then walls, then locks.

Into all this comes the Mayor. He has blinding blond hair and a smile so bright people shade their eyes. He arrived as a world-famous dragon hunter, and, what luck, dragons started being spotted in the woods the very week he turned up. He tells the town he alone can fix it, and they press their hands to their hearts when he says it.

Next door to the ruins of the library are fifteen orphans, named in alphabetical order from Anthea down to the babies. Out where the road winds away there is an Ogress with hands the size of heron's wings, who bakes, and gardens, and counts the stars, and makes friends with the crows because nobody in town will talk to her.

The crows are wonderful. They caw at her about their rapacious talons and their long memories, and she bows so low her head nearly touches the ground and offers them dinner.

Then one of the orphans disappears, and the Mayor knows exactly whose fault that must be.

The voice is the thing here. Somebody is telling you this story, out loud, and keeps butting in. Pay attention. Listen. I am sorry about the long words, but my feelings about this dragon are large.

It moves slowly on purpose, in short chapters that each take one piece of the town and turn it over. Readers who like a plot to gallop may find the first fifty pages a stroll. Readers who love being read to, or who like a story that trusts them with something, tend to fall completely into it.

Fair warning that it is about a crowd being unkind, and it is pointed about how easily that happens.

What to read next

For another Barnhill story about a woman everyone in town is certain is a monster, The Girl Who Drank the Moon opens with a village leaving a baby in the forest every year to keep the witch away.