Thank you, NetGalley, for an e-ARC of The Ogress and the Orphans by Kelly Barnhill.
Such a great book at such a needed time. The political satire in this books makes you question everything you know as an adult. However, being written for middle grade readers it contains important lessons on judging others as well as how we let those in power control our thinking. A book that speaks to all ages!

It was a great story, with some spectacular lines and foreshadowing. The biggest problem I have is that it was too long. Some parts could have been condensed and maybe a little long for the intended audience. The characters are well-written (my favorite being the crows!)

What a charming new fairy tale, the likes of Ella Enchanted. I loved this sweet story that pointed out the virtues of community and kindness while tackling judging others based on appearance and hearsay.

“Books, after all, have their own peculiar gravity, given the collective weight of words and thoughts and ideas. Just as the gravitational field around a black hole bends and wobbles the space around it, so too, does the tremendous mass of ideas in a large collection of books”

Just in time for Middlegrade March this was written by Kelly Barnhill in response to the increasing division and mistrust she saw in communities and society at large. She uses The Ogress and The Orphans to ask what makes a good neighbour and what difference can the kindness of ordinary people make in the unhappy town of Stone-in-the-Glen

A modern parable, as an adult reader there are certain parallels you might draw (the selfish town mayor for example), but as a child you might come away with the sense that books have power, that there’s magic in giving rather than taking and that the kindness of neighbours can make all the difference in the world
“After all, the more you give, the more you have”

There’s a conversational tone to the writing that reminded me of Lemony Snicket and I loved the slightly snarky omnipotent narrator who intercedes in the story every so often, usually because no one has bothered to ask their opinion. I also enjoyed the flights of fancy - did you know that you can learn to speak crow, but it’s a difficult language. The word for muffin is very similar to thank you! At times it felt like it could tip into moralising, but was saved by the sheer magic of the characters and the importance of the central message

Part fairy tale, part allegory, this is one of the most interesting books I've read this year. The words are just lovely and would serve as an amazing mentor text for educators teaching authors' craft.

An orphanage is located in a once-beautiful town called Stone-in-the-Glen. A series of disasters resulted in a sense of distrust and a lack of empathy in the villagers, and the orphanage is left to fend for itself. The mayor of Stone-in-the-Glen seems to have cast a spell over most of the villagers, making them idolize him, but the clever orphans can see through the ruse. When one of the orphans goes missing, the mayor blames the kind ogress who lives nearby, and the orphans set out to rectify the situation, including saving their town.

While I adored the characters and the plot, I feel the story would best be appreciated by younger children (say, Gr. 2-4). The reading level, however, is higher than that age group can typically handle, so I'm not sure who would make the best target audience. Definitely, younger children who are strong readers will appreciate it, and this is a niche market that is sorely lacking in resources!

I received this book through NetGalley, ad would like to thank them, Kelly Barnhill and Algonquin for the copy.

A fun story that will help children learn how to slowly change the world around them. With dragons, ogres, and a little bit of magic, these orphans will learn how to save their town from turning on each other.

This wonderful middle grade story is about a group of orphans, their caregivers and the community that is supposed to help care for them. It's full of interesting characters and surprising problems and even more surprising solutions. I loved this one.

Intricate world building! I really enjoyed having the children be the voice of reason and the ogress be the kind one.

This is a story about the power of kindness. The power of dazzling lies. And what happens to the foundation of a community when they believe those lies.
Yes, there is an ogress. She's nice.

There's also a dragon. In disguise.

There are also crows. And a dog.

And there are 15 children in an orphanage who are clear-eyed, like many children can be, and who are cared for with lots of love by Matron and Myron. The children wonder about why people believe certain things and why they treat each other the way they do. For the children, the answers seem simple. But not so much for the adults.

The ogress is kind and loves to grow vegetables, fruits, and bake. She also loves to sneak out at night and leave gifts on all the neighbors' doorsteps.

But when she gets falsely accused of something, and the mayor encourages the falsehoods, it's left to the children to prove the townspeople wrong.

Does kindness win in the end? (Spoiler alert: of course it does.) And that's why you should read it to your students. It is a book about kindness, how we treat our neighbors, and the power of clear thinking.

Listen. I love Kelly Barnhill's books. I love her voice and style and the magic in the stories she weaves. I love the opportunities for older children to find similarities between the events in this story and the real-life events under the presidency of a certain dragonous imposter and results he had on the people. I love the opportunities for younger children, who are too innocent for such philosophical conversations, to simply enjoy the magic and the storytelling. I was hopeful that in reading the book to my own children that they might be inspired by the behavior of the orphans, who never argue or make messes and work hard all day without being told--but so far, I haven't noticed any attempts to emulate such behavior. (They loved the story, though.)

Ms. Barnhill, please keep writing books for children (and the adults who love them and teach them).

Rarely have I come across an author with as consistent magic as Kelly Barnhill. I have read each of her books and own a copy of every one so far and they are all pioneering in the mixture of fantasy, emotion, drama, personal growth, and the craft of weaving these together from a mass of colorful threads, each representing an idea, a character, a concept, and always creating the most beautiful and thought provoking result of an gorgeous warm scarf of an intricate tale that brings laughter and tears and lingers in the mind long after the final page. I was no less delighted with this newest edition, The Ogress and the Orphans, which has turned and often I’ll thought of fantasy species into a dear and beloved new friend in the form of a sweet natured ogress , offset by her polar opposite, the egocentric mayor set on self promotion at the expense of the unlikely but gentle benefactor of orphans. Throw in some talking crows, a few lovely pies, and , two kindly elderly sweethearts with nothing but kindness in their hearts , and several feisty and resourceful orphans and you’ve got a rollicking fun tale sure to entail and also educate in the ways of perseverance and perception.

This one gives me The House in the Cerulean Sea vibes. I can see this one being a great story to read with your kiddos, or a great gift! This book will take them on a beautiful journey with different creatures and of course the Orgress and Orphans. I'm loving that it's giving me a feeling of nostalgia to when I first fell in love with books as a kid myself!

This fairytale-like story is about a lovely town that isn't lovely anymore. Bad luck has fallen on them. Their library burned down and then more calamity fell upon them. Now, they don't trust each other and have lost the art of neighborliness and kindness. The orphanage has 15 children and the couple lovingly taking care of them can barely feed them. It seems there just isn't any funding for this anymore. Meanwhile, an Ogress moves nearby and begins a campaign of kindness by leaving little gifts on the doorsteps of villagers at night. Yes, and there are crows, sheep, a stone, a dragon, talking beams, crow language, and a suspicious mayor.

This book may be a little slow going for some as it slowly builds the world of Stone-in-the Glen town. But it is a very sweet story filled with lots of delightful scenes. In the end, I wanted to hug this book.

Biggest thanks to Algonquin Young Readers and NetGalley for an advanced copy of The Orgess and the Orphans.

I'm probably the only person alive who didn't enjoy Kelly Barnhill's renowned book The Girl Who Drank the Moon. This made me reluctant to request an advanced copy of this book, but am SO GLAD that I did. I absolutely loved it! The Orgess and the Orphans is an allegory with the question "What does it mean to be a good neighbor?" at its core. Stone-in-the-Glen used to be a lovely town. The library was at its physical and cultural center. A string of calamities has decimated the once-perfect area. The citizens have placed their trust in the wrong person. Fortunately, the children living in the orphanage have a reading room full of books salvaged from the former library to help them find out the truth about their town. Meanwhile, an ogress living on the outskirts of town seems to be one of the area's few truly kind souls. Can she and the orphans save their town from further devastation?

All the stars for this book, friends! For me, it was a slow read because I just wanted to take in all of Barnhill's beautifully crafted words and savor them.

What I liked:
The Ogress and the Orphans take an old-time way of telling a story with a lesson, usually called a parable, making it relevant and engaging to today's young readers. This parable contains a wide range of characters with unique traits to move along the tale. The ogress is she who everyone thinks she is. He and the dragon might be precisely what you think. The town that been destroyed, and they turned on each other—the wide-eyed orphans who saw everything and wanted to tell the truth desperately. The spectacle in this tale is raw and truthful of the hard times we face in today's world, but what if we showed more kindness to each other, made someone's day just a bit better with a helping hand?
Final Verdict:
The parable of kindness and treating each other with respect is told in a way children will find engaging and enduring. I love stories that show children the truth and do not have the meaning hidden and hard to find. It also shows that we should question who is in charge if we feel or see things that don't seem right. This novel is a book of hope and light in a world that no longer seems bright.

I absolutely devoured this middle grade read, it was lyrical, fun, heartwarming and had some important lessons on life and values. Read in one sitting and highly recommend. Absolutely fantastic.

The Ogress and the Orphans is a fun read, with two stories - that of the ogress and of the orphans - running in parallel for much of the novel. The ogress and the orphans all live in the same town of Stone-in-the-Glen, but since the ogress is generally active at night, and the orphans during the day, they rarely encounter each other. Each has their own problems - the ogress is lonely, and surrounds herself with animals on her farm, while the orphans are needy, and are doing the best they can in a town that seems to have forgotten them.

Stone-in-the-Glen was a happy, thriving town - until the Library burned down. Over time, the loss of the Library led to the loss of neighborly feelings amongst the townspeople - or was that really the cause? This is a nice fantasy fable that includes a mystery, with clues along the way to help readers figure out the true cause of the problems. It also speaks to some current social problems with stereotypes, misinformation, and suspicion, as well as including a nice moral about generosity rewarding the giver. Recommended for ages 8 and up - a great story for kids, but also enjoyable for adults.

I was provided with a copy of this novel at no charge for review, and I leave this review freely.

This book is not at all what I expected; it’s much better than that. My thanks go to Net Galley and Algonquin Young Readers for the invitation to read and review. This book is for sale now.

This lovely story is told in the second person omniscient, and we cannot tell, until the end, who the narrator is. Our setting is the sweet (fictitious) village of Stone-in-the-Glen, and it’s told in linear fashion. Because its telling is straightforward, with no changes in point of view or time period, and no heart-hammering suspense, it is ideal for bedtime reading. It’s marketed as a children’s book, and here I disagree, in part anyway. The vocabulary is too advanced for an early reader, but would serve well as a story to read aloud to students in upper elementary classes, or as a read-alone for the gifted child. There is no sexual content, drugs, or bad language.

Because I believed this was going to be a children’s book, I thought I’d whisk through it in no time and review it the same week I started, but I sensed immediately, once I’d begun, that this was not that kind of story. Its length, density of page and paragraph, and content call for a more leisurely pace, but also, it’s just too good to rush through. I am a sucker for excellent alliterative language (see what I did there?) and Barnhill is a champion in this regard. I found myself going back a page or two to reread, highlighting the best passages for no reason but my own pleasure.

The plot is easily summarized. The lovely little village is friendly and flourishing until the town library, which has magical powers, burns down. Without benefit of the library, villagers keep to themselves, and they become secretive and greedy. The mayor could help, but chooses not to do so. He’s a real piece of, um, work.

The orphanage in particular is in dire straits. They haven’t been getting their promised funding lately, and the place is starting to fall apart. The children are hungry. Were it not for the largesse of an anonymous donor, one that leaves big boxes of vegetables at the gate for them to find in the morning, they would starve.
The Ogress is their benefactor. We know this early on, so I don’t consider it a spoiler. However, due to the misconceptions of the villagers, which the mayor feeds shamelessly, the Ogress soon becomes a scapegoat. These two problems—local poverty, and the hostility toward the one among them that is different—form the basis of the story.

As to the allegory, which is dropped in midway through in a fairly heavy-handed manner, I am of two minds. On the one hand, my philosophy is similar to the author’s, and so I snicker when I see what she’s doing here. On the other hand, this is exactly the book one reaches for when one has had enough, enough, enough of current events and the outside world, and allegory becomes something of a distraction. When I see who the mayor represents, I start eyeing the other characters. Does the Ogress represent someone in the real world as well? What else am I missing? These musings are more likely to lodge themselves in the mind of a language arts teacher; I recognize that. But my preference would be to either turn the whole thing into a piece of political satire and own it, or to leave it alone and have a sweet story devoid of political content, one that readers on both ends of the political spectrum can enjoy—maybe even enjoy together.

These minor issues aside, I love this story. It’s my first taste of Barnhill’s writing, but it surely won’t be the last. Highly recommended.

I loved the orphans and the ogress, too! The characters develop quietly but with a strong voice. The voice os the stone is poetic and all-seeing. The theme is pitch-perfect for today’s world. I look forward to sharing this title with my students.

Thank you to NetGalley for an eArc of this book.

An incredibly deliberate and methodical story, akin to a slow-moving, creaking waterwheel. There’s beauty, there’s repetition, there are reliable outcomes, and sometimes you just want things to move a bit faster. The overwhelming feeling I had when reading was pent-up frustration.

Let me put it this way: if you are exasperated at people who view the current pandemic as an individual problem and grit your teeth as we drop community mitigations, or if your heart sinks as you see people get sucked into propagandist and conspiracist rabbit holes where they live in a pit of cynical fear and suspicion and greed, then this book may offer you more of the same frustration. I think many readers also see hope in this story, but I don’t know that I can translate the kindness and clarity that emerges (finally) in this story into the real world.

There’s a lot of good stuff in here about acts of kindness, about thinking for yourself, about neighbors and community. But the story itself is a long, slow rollout that only picks up the pace in the last third or so.

Ultimately, I enjoyed this, but it echoed reality in ways that were not a relief for me, and instead added to my discouraged feelings about the self-centered, short-sighted world we are living in.