School Library Journal Review
Gr 3-6-Olivia Kidney's building superintendent father has just moved them to yet another new apartment building in New York City. One day, 12-year-old Olivia loses her key, and in her efforts to gain entrance to the building she meets a number of the strange residents. During the course of the day, Olivia meets a ghost who is a friendly boy her own age, a woman whose floors are made entirely of glass so that she can spy unnoticed on neighbors below, two intense and unpleasant girls, a sinister ex-pirate and an elderly siren to whom he is in servitude who live in an apartment resembling a tropical rainforest. Olivia is invited into their homes, and they tell her their stories. Olivia reveals the fact that she is lonely and unhappy since her brother died of cancer and her mother left the family. A visiting psychic named Madame Brenda tells Olivia that if she listens carefully enough, she will hear her brother speaking to her. Are these all just the fantastic imaginings of a sad girl? Listeners will immediately be drawn into this novel by Ellen Potter (Philomel, 2003). Narrator Tara Sands's voice is child-like and effectively conveys Olivia's changing perceptions. The quirky tale is wonderfully served by Sands' ability to portray a variety of characters and deliver humor in appropriately dry tones. This inventive, unusual, and poignant audiobook will spark lots of interesting discussions.-B. Allison Gray, John Jermain Memorial Library, Sag Harbor, NY (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
At once exuberant and poignant, Potter's cunningly crafted first novel can be read on a variety of levels. It starts out like a wacky comedy. Olivia has just moved into a Manhattan apartment with her father, the building's new superintendent, their fourth move in two years ("The problem was that George, who was the absolute nicest man in the entire United States, and possibly Canada too, was a terrible superintendent"). Locked out of her apartment one afternoon, the 12-year-old makes astonishing discoveries. The elderly woman down the hall has an apartment made entirely of glass, and she spies on the residents below through her transparent floor. Another woman wears a "shawl" made of live lizards and has, apparently, escaped from pirates, lived on a desert island and is mistaken for a long-missing, Amelia Earhart-type aviator. Olivia also gets dragged to a seance, and she makes friends with a boy whose mother-busy milking the family goat while the boy's 10 siblings play wildly-doesn't quite recognize his name. But just when the tales-within-tales seem incontrovertibly outlandish, Potter picks up the clues she has planted about Olivia's own past and uses the fantasy elements of her story to explore the trouble Olivia has in confronting her losses. Achieving a delicate balance between fantasy and stark reality, the author leaves it to readers to form their own interpretations of Olivia's experiences. A memorable debut. Ages 8-12. (June) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved