Ellen Potter's (Olivia Kidney; The Kneebone Boy) haunting story opens with a girl left orphaned after the murder of her parents, and the suspense never slackens.
Cough Rock is not a place where you'd expect to see a girl clambering along the shoreline. This lonely island is home to an old children's hospital and little else. Within the hospital, however, lives a reclusive man; the orphan girl is his niece.
At 12, Roo Fanshaw may be small for her age, but her fiercely independent spirit makes up for her lack of inches. She does not mind the solitude of her new home--Roo has always preferred the company of mice or flowers to people. But there is something unnatural about Cough Rock. "She stood very still for a moment, listening. No, not listening exactly. It was more like sensing. She tested places in this way.... This place, though, was like nothing she'd ever experienced before. The air was dead, as if all living smells had been deliberately scoured away."
Roo finds the air filled, instead, with rules and secrets. The building's east wing is "strictly off-limits." She hears humming and crying coming from the old girls' dormitory, yet no one is ever there. As Roo explores the house, she brings to light secrets that have long been sealed away behind its walls. In this reimagining of Burnett's The Secret Garden, Potter conjures a curious tale sure to appeal to today's young readers. --Julia Smith, blogger and children's bookseller emerita