Mandy by Julie Edwards

★★★★

This book just sort of fell into my lap. My uncle was packing up his house for a move, throwing out and giving away a lot of random stuff. He had two boxes of books from which we salvaged a handful of keepers, and then donated the rest. While rummaging through the boxes, I skipped over this book because I didn't recognize the title or the author, and the cover illustration didn't capture my interest. A couple days later, I was surprised when Isabelle saved this book from the donation pile, telling me, "I want to read it. It's by that person you like, in The Sound of Music!"

Well, apparently Isabelle had done a better job examining the books than I did! Sure enough, I flipped over the book, read the back cover, and indeed, "Julie Edwards" the author is the same as "Julie Andrews" from The Sound of Music and Mary Poppins! I think I vaguely knew that she wrote children's books, but I imagined them to be picture books for young children, not novels. Anyway, what a find!

As it turns out, this is a lovely book. Mandy is an orphan who finds an old abandoned cottage on the property adjoining the orphanage. Having always felt an aching loneliness from not belonging to a family, she finds that having a secret cottage all to herself - a place to take care of and to call all her own - makes her really, really happy.

Mandy is a sweet, polite, and thoughtful girl. At one point, she does resort to "borrowing" items from the orphanage to help her efforts at the cottage, but she is riddled with guilt and vows to return the items when she can afford to buy her own. (She diligently helps out in a local general store for pocket money.) Though only 10 years old, she uses matches and makes her own fires at the cottage, though these events are mentioned only in passing, as if a child starting fires is not out of the ordinary. And perhaps it wasn't in the English countryside in 1971, when the book was first published? Well, I'll just be sure to remind Isabelle, if she reads this book, that these days, kids aren't allowed to use matches by themselves. :P

Anyway, the book is predictable, and though it makes for a nice story, it doesn't really offer anything especially new or different. Still, an enjoyable read, and I even shed a few tears at the end. The sentences are simple and straight-forward, yet well-written. The reading level might be a little above Isabelle now, so maybe we will read it together as a bedtime read-aloud book, or maybe we'll just keep it on the shelf until she feels ready to read it on her own.