I felt like this was a very moving book, I enjoyed getting to know Maggie and her keeping her promise to her father who had passed away. She buys a tweed coat to help give her inspiration when somethings happen that make her think the coat is haunted and she goes about trying to solve the mystery,

#ApromiseStitchedInTime #NetGalley



Maggie buys a tweed coat at a thrift store and she thinks it is haunted.

The story is set during the Holocaust.. I hesitate to say I enjoyed the story but I did.

I like how the mystery unfolded and Maggie was a believable and likeable character.

The reader is given a glimpse of the horrors but not too much which is a good thing.

So overall the book held my interest and attention and I liked some of the twists the book took us on.

I recommend this book.


I received an ARC of this book via Netgelley in exchange for an honest review.

An interesting premise, looking at grief through a historically set mystery. There are moments where this shows real promise. There are also elements of slightly clumsy writing here though, and I can't help but feel that some of the uses of the Holocaust are a little too forced to serve as either useful plot drivers or as reasoned and respectable looks at the true horrors of that tragedy.

A Promise Stitched in Time by Colleen Rowan Kosinski is a poignant tale of love and friendship that transcends time.

Maggie McConnell is a young artist with a deadline for entry into an art contest. Maggie hopes to win a scholarship to the Peabody Academy. On a quest for the perfect inspiration, Maggie buys a tweed coat at a thrift store, and ends up with more than she knows what to do with. A slew of paranormal events convinces Maggie her coat is haunted. With Taj, a childhood friend, Maggie sets about attempting to unravel the mystery of the tweed coat. Intense visions that become increasingly worse lead Maggie back to a person she's known for some time- Miss Berk, an elderly lady with a past more extraordinary and heart-breaking than Maggie could have guessed. Unraveling the mystery of the coat leads Maggie to paint the most haunting work she's ever done.

I really enjoyed this book. It's a fairly quick read with a deep message. It may feature a ghost, or paranormal events, but it's far from a horror story, unless it is the horror engendered by a very, very horrific event perpetrated by people against other humans. It's more a psychological thriller, prompting thoughtful consideration. Is Maggie being haunted? Is she having a serious psychological break? Having visions of a past-life? Maggie's (and Taj's) perception resonates the most with me. It fits with my own worldview, though I'd rather not share Maggie's experiences.

While I loved Maggie and Taj, and most secondary characters, I really just did not like Patty. She came across as very shallow. She's all about the popular crowd, and tries to guilt Maggie into abandoning Taj as a friend. She doesn't seem to really listen to Maggie's opinions, needs, or desires. Highly recommended!

***Many thanks to Netgalley and Schiffer Publishing for providing an egalley in exchange for a fair and honest review.

A Promise Stitched in Time by Colleen Rowan Kosinski was an interesting middle grade book about grief, acceptance and friendship, with a touch of historical mystery. It introduces young readers to a heavy topic: the Holocaust.

Maggie must create a thought-provoking art piece to complete her application to a prestigious art school and admission to Peabody will allow her to fulfill a promise to her father who died three years previously. But inspiration alludes her until an out-dated tweed coat seems to call her name as she searches for a subject in a thrift store. From the moment the coat is in her possession, a painting of a young girl begins to flow onto the canvas and unusual dreams and thought begin to haunt her. Taj, a friend from Maggie’s preschool days who has returned to town, tries to help figure out what’s happening and in the process, becomes important to Maggie and a source of irritation to her sister.

I found A Promise Stitched in Time to be a heartwarming story that not only introduces the Holocaust to today's young readers, but also an important book that addresses the grieving process. 

Thank you Schiffer Publishing Ltd., Schiffer Kids and NetGalley for this e-ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I requested A Promise Stitched in Time because I’m preparing to teach a WW2 study and hoped this would be a good addition to our read alouds for that unit. I would gladly add this to my lineup. The content is mature in nature in the sense that the holocaust is a mature subject regardless of the words used to discuss. Colleen Rosinski did a great job of surrounding a tough subject to navigate with a story that intertwined the present and the past.

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Maggie made a promise to her dying dad that she would enter an art contest to attend an art school and continue their shared past time. In searching for inspiration she came across a tweed coat that seemed to be calling to her. Once Maggie brought the coat home she started having dreams and flashbacks and interactions with a girl from the past. The coat gave her what she need to draw but the coat gave her so much more than that. With the help of her sister, Patty, and her boyfriend, Taj, as well as a friend she met through a senior center volunteer gig, Maggie was able to discover things about the past and herself. Maggie discovered she was someone more than she once thought and more than she knew she could be.

I would recommend this children’s fiction work to children 10 or older. I think the subject matter would be too much for a child younger than that. That’s my opinion based on teaching a child that age.

*Thank you NetGalley and Schiffer Publishing for the chance to read this Advanced Reader Copy. All opinions are my own. *

A Promise Stitched in Time is a novella with an interesting premise and a disappointing execution. Dedicated to the memory of two women seamstresses held prisoners at Auschwitz, the book involves Maggie McConnell, who recently lost her father, and her quest to find a suitable subject for a painting that could earn her a summer art academy scholarship. She searches in thrift shops for items to paint and walks away with an old coat that has memories (and more) imbued in it. My problem with the book lies with a painfully real series of events in human history (Shoah, the Holocaust) being convolved with pseudoscience like astrology and theories like reincarnation. There's already enough Holocaust denial out there. Do we really want to juxtapose these two unprovable/pseudoscience-y things with something history tells us is fact? While it's evident that the author's intent was positive, the convolving of the real with unreal just felt poorly conceived. I think this book was a missed opportunity. I felt there should have been ways to tell Maggie and Gittel's story better, more realistically and more authentically. Just having Maggie solve the mystery of the coat and having Gittel explain the story of it and retrieve the personal item in it could have been a magnificent story about a young person building a relationship and learning history from an elderly Holocaust survivor. Maggie could have painted Gittel's memories in that context.

As a courtesy to the new author, this review is not being disseminated on social media but will stand on my blog and on Goodreads.

Trying to keep promise she made to her dad, who passed away, Maggie buys a tweed coat with a fur collar in hopes to recover from her painter’s block. The coat triggers a series of Maggie’s past life memories and she finds herself reliving the horrors of being a Jewish girl during World War II. The coat not only helps Maggie keeping her promise to her father, but also her promise to an old and very dear friend,
I enjoyed how the writer described Maggie’s work with her paints and brushes in her studio and how she weaved a holocaust story into a contemporary setting. A wonderful story I would recommend to lower ks3 children.

What a moving and emotional story. I was so moved by the writing and storyline. This is the story of Maggie who made a promise to her Dad she would get into a good art school. One day she goes to a thrift store for inspiration for her painting and finds a tweed coat with a fur collar. Having had painter block the coat somehow encourages her to paint. As the painting goes on she finds her picture has to do with a young girl who was imprisoned in a concentration camp. In the meantime she is getting her first boyfriend who everyone thinks is strange because he dresses different. She is also a volunteer at a nursing home and very attached to one of the Alzhiemer's patients Mrs. Beck. I really think the author captured this story very well and had a lot of truth in it. I would recommend it for anyone 13+ because of the content. But I do highly recommend this book.
I received this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

This was an interesting middle grade book about grief, acceptance and friendship, with a touch of historical mystery. It introduces young readers to a heavy topic: the Holocaust. Our main character Maggie is going through the grieving process when she feels a connection to a old coat she finds. She starts to have "memories" of this girl with big brow eyes, who seems to be trying to tell her something. It was an interesting story based on true events with a touch of the supernatural. The only thing I didn't like was the sister, Patty. She was beyond annoying to me but I guess she was a caricature of a typical teenage girl.

I received an ARC of this book via Netgelley in exchange for an honest review.

As most children, I fell in love with stories about the holocaust when I was in the second grade. That has not changed as I’ve gotten older.

I was drawn to the cover of this book before I knew anything about it, and the description only made me want to read it more. A haunted vintage coat found in a thrift store? Sign me up! And while I did enjoy the story, the ending left me feeling a little strange. I feel like there is a huge leap from ghostly posession to actual reincarnation, and I’m not sure that a book about the holocaust is the point in which we should introduce the idea of reincarnation to a bunch of 4th graders. Overall, it was readable and pretty, but not a new favorite.

Expected Publication September 28th, 2018

A slim novel that introduces young readers to the subject of the Holocaust by bringing to life a true story almost forgotten in the ashes of history.

Margaret May( Maggie) dreams of honouring her late father's memory by being accepted to the Peabody Summer Arts Academy in Princeton, New Jersey. While trying to create a piece of artwork that will get her noticed, Maggie comes into possession of a tweed coat. This coat is soon linked to two young women that worked as seamstresss in Auschwitz concentration camp. Her sister, Patty, believes Maggie to be acting silly about the coat and Maggie feels that her dreams and visions may be making her crazy. But then a young boy named, Taj, befriends Maggie and he quickly believes that someone from the past is giving Maggie these dreams for a reason.

I found A Promise Stiched in Time to be a compelling and heartwarming story that not only introduces the Holocaust to today's young readers, but also an important book that addresses the grieving process. Because Maggie is an artist, I found that there was plenty of attention paid to how colour works in the story and filled with splendid examples of figurative language.

Maggie must create a thought-provoking art piece to complete her application to a prestigious art school and admission to Peabody will allow her to fulfill a promise to her father who died three years previously. But inspiration alludes her until an out-dated tweed coat seems to call her name as she searches for a subject in a thrift store. From the moment the coat is in her possession, a painting of a young girl begins to flow onto the canvas and unusual dreams and thought begin to haunt her. Taj, a friend from Maggie’s preschool days who has returned to town, tries to help figure out what’s happening and in the process, becomes important to Maggie and a source of irritation to her sister. The publisher’s summary mentioned the Holocaust which is a topic of huge interest to many of my library patrons and books in both the fiction and non-fiction section stay checked out so I read this one anticipating a purchase. Promoting “A Promise Stitched in Time” will be easy as it should appeal to more than just those who seek out WWII themed books. This one is a good choice for fans of ghost stories, historical fiction, mysteries, as well as having a popular theme of middle grades students struggling to find their own niches and feel secure in them. With its unintimidating length, Kosinski’s book will also likely be a good choice for the more reluctant reader. Recommended for grades 5-9. Content notes: main characters attend a school dance with “dates” but they simply meet them at the school and go in together, two very light kisses occur, a seance is attempted, and reincarnation is included as a possible occurrence.

A Promise Stitched in Time

by Colleen Rowan Kosinski

Schiffer Publishing Ltd.

Schiffer Kids

Children’s Fiction

Pub Date 28 Sep 2018

I am reviewing a copy of A Promise Stiched in Time by Schiffer Publishing and Netgalley:

Maggie purchases an old tweed coat for artistic inspiration after her Father dies and grief has made it hard for her to find her artistic inspiration!

Determined to win the Scholarship to the prestigious art program propels her to the Salvation Army store where she finds the tweed coat. A coat that will change the way she views the world and her place in it. The coat awakens her muse and it changed the way she views her place in this world.

Maggie has a feeling that the previous owner is haunting the coat.

I give A Promise Stitched in Time five out of five stars!

Happy Reading!

A smart and slightly spooky middle grade read, this is the story of Maggie, a young artist determined to keep a promise to her dying father, and win a scholarship to a prestigious art program. Struggling to find inspiration, she finds herself drawn to an old coat in a thrift store, and takes it home. Soon strange dreams start to plague her and it seems like the previous owner of the coat may still be hanging around, but as the visions continue, she learns that the history of the coat may be much darker than anything she imagined.
The historical aspect of the book is inspired by a true story, that of the women forced to sew for the Commandant's wife at Auschwitz, and the visions experienced by Maggie are about life at the camp.
I loved the character of Maggie, and found her struggle to deal with the death of her father both believable and moving, but I am not sure that the combination of her story with the historical aspects worked as well as I hoped it would, in fact I felt like the book dragged a little..I did love the cover illustration , in fact that is what drew my attention to the book in the first place.
I read and reviewed an ARC courtesy of NetGalley and the publisher, all opinions are my own.

I am not sure how to classify this as it is quite the hybrid of historical, realistic, fantasy and mystery. This isn’t the typical Holocaust story as it uses the time in history to give Maggie perspective and serves as inspiration for her art work. The reader is given a glimpse of the horrors of the Holocaust without being too overwhelming. I felt like the middle school characters acted as though they were much older so that didn’t feel right to me.

A Promise Stitched in Time is really about two promises: Maggie's promise to her father to get into the Peabody Academy for the arts and Freyda's promise to Gittel to find her one day. That Maggie and Freyda are one and the same, from different lifetimes, is the stuff of fiction and drama. The subplots of teen romance, the sisters' relationship, and incidents from the Holocaust, however unlikely, are actually compelling connections that help to make the story work.

I think older middle school and younger high school students, particularly girls, will like the story. The story is intriguing without being overbearing (relative to the cruel reality of the Holocaust references) for young readers.
That the story is one of reincarnation is better left revealed at the end, just as the author chose. Unless the book is presented and offered as a work of fiction, I anticipate that younger readers in particular will question whether reincarnation is "real".

It is only with considerable reflection that one can grasp that Freyda's promise was stitched in time as the locket was stitched in the coat. It is a point well taken and perhaps should be made a little less subtly? So as not to be missed?

Thanks to Netgalley for the opportunity to read and review this book. I enjoyed it and recommend it.

What an intriguing and beautiful story! I think my older students will gravitate toward the mystical aspect of it, while still getting involved in the history behind the coat. There were several twists and turns, lots of great historical research, and character lessons thrown in as well. A new keeper!

Book: A Promise Stitched in Time
Author: Colleen Kosinski
Rating: 2 Out of 5 Stars

I would like to thank Netgalley and the publisher, Schiffer Publishing, for providing me with this ARC.

Once again, I really didn’t get what I was expecting out of a book. This is seems to be happening a lot lately. I was expecting a powerful and moving read about the Holocaust, but ended up with something different. I was completely thrown by the mention of ghosts and all of that. I did know that it was partially going to be set in modern times, but I was expecting to be done a little different that’s all.

I picked this up because I am always looking to expand my classroom library and thought that this could be a good book to add down the road. I don’t think I will be though because it’s not up to standard of what I add to my classroom library. The writing wasn’t compelling and the storyline was extremely lacking. There was too many parts that there lacking that I just don’t think my students would really enjoy this book.

Maggie is a rather enjoyable character. She is trying to move from the death of her father and is really struggling. Her pain does seem to come off the page, but, yet, she isn’t as well developed as she could be. I just don’t see middle age readers really latching onto her and actually wanting to know more about her character.

Taj is Maggie’s long lost friend and the male lead. Once again, he is a rather enjoyable character, but could had been better. Like Maggie, he just wasn’t as developed as he could had been.

I know, I know this is a middle school read, but I have read a lot of middle school books and they were just as developed as other books. Middle school students are often times the most reluctant readers and, therefore, middle school writers do have to be aware of this. You have to almost be more on top of your game than other writers. Take, for example, Number of the Stars. It’s another middle school book set during the Holocaust. It has well developed characters, good plot, and good writing, which is why is it so popular.

I just think that this book could had been better and does have room for improvement. If you don’t agree and want to check it out, it’s currently on Netgalley and will be published on September 28, 2018.


(Review is already on Goodreads and will be posted on Amazon on publication date.)

After reading the Red Ribbon, the next book I found was this one, also partially set in Auschwitz, and also about the women who sewed for the Commandant's wife.

This version, however, was told from the point of view of a contemporary girl, who was a little slow on the uptake in figuring out who first owned the coat she picked up at a thrift store. I don't mean that she was slow to find the owner, but slow to figure out the visions she was having were of a concentration camp.

Raj, the love interest, was fun, although it was a bit of instanta-love. Maggie's sister, Patty, was a stereotypical teen interested in fashion and boys. But, I was curious as to why the coat was taking her over, so that part of the story was good.

Decent enough introduction to the the holocaust.

Thanks to Netgalley for making this book available for an honest review.