THE MUSEUM OF MARY CHILD

“Riveting allegory” sounds like an oxymoron, but this novel lives up to the billing. From a young man chained in prison, the story turns to Heloise, a child raised by an unloving godmother who runs a mysterious museum from which visitors emerge troubled and shocked. Raised without toys or playmates, her only book a much-censored Bible, Heloise takes refuge in her imagination. When she finds a doll hidden in her room and discovers the secret of the museum, her true journey begins. The riveting plot ranges far and wide, finally coming full circle. Along the way, readers meet dolls that come to life and dolls that don’t; the Society of Caged Birds; a church choir of orphan girls; hate, suffering, joy and, most of all, love. Although the tropes are Christian, this is not an allegory of Christianity like the Chronicles of Narnia but of the love and the common humanity that underlie and connect all faiths. Beautifully written, this work by a seasoned Australian author revisits territory once owned by Robert Cormier: the enthralling moral fable. (Fantasy. 11 & up)