Girlwood

by Claire Dean

Overview

Every day has a moment of wonder in it that most people pass right by.

Deep in the woods, surrounded by a wall of thorns, is a grove of larch trees called Girlwood. Few know how to find it: Only Baba, an old, eccentric grandmother, who understands the power hidden within wild plants. And Bree, a reckless teenager, who runs away from home one dark autumn night. And Polly, the younger sister, whom Baba loves and Bree leaves. Polly, who can see the light and colors of all living things.

Girlwood. A place where fairies live and wolves prowl. A place where Polly and her friends build their own shelter and control their own fire. But can Polly and the girls of Girlwood save Polly's sister, Bree? Can they save the grove from developers? Can they save the magic within themselves?

In Girlwood, anything is possible.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780998602509
Publisher:	Long Creek Books
Publication date:	08/21/2020
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.43(d)
Age Range:	9 - 12 Years

About the Author

Claire Dean, who also writes as Christy Yorke and Christy Cohen, is the author of 11 published novels, including Girlwood, Spirit Caller, and The Wishing Garden. She lives in Boise, Idaho with her husband, Robert, and Jenny, a Great Dane/Labrador/Jerk mix. The pseudonym Claire Dean is taken from the names of the author's two children, and only used when she writes the books of her heart. Nature, and the forest in particular, has always been a vital part of the author's life, from spending her summer vacations at her father's cabin in Prescott, Arizona, to the home she and her husband built in the woods outside of Boise, to the electricity-less and haunted Idaho cabin she's been fortunate enough to summer in, and continually renovate. The friendly cabin ghost is named Mr. Jackson.

Read an Excerpt

The first and last kiss Polly received from her sister was as contrary as Bree herself. Lightweight but intense, a kiss that was supposed to impart some deep meaning but offer zero affection, a kiss that was retracted nearly before it began. It was past midnight, and Polly was not only too tired to open her eyes, she was so sick of her stoned, skeletal, sixteen-year-old sister that she didn’t even acknowledge Bree was there.

It was just like Bree to ruin Polly’s favorite hour, the only time she had left to swim with mermaids or imagine herself flying without Bree asking her if she was having some kind of fit. Polly kept her eyes shut tight and pictured a magical woodland creature instead of her sister, the flutter of a fairy’s kiss instead of Bree’s.

She stuck to this vision, even when the fairy didn’t smell like cedar or honeysuckle but like an unwashed teenager and marijuana smoke. The kiss was even more far-fetched than fairies, if you asked Polly. It had been months since Bree had entered Polly’s room except to steal cash. In fact, Polly couldn’t remember the last time her sister had said anything to her aside from “Shut up” or “Freak” or, when Polly had caught her snorting up a line of white powder, “If you tell Mom, I’ll kill you.”

*** Not too long ago, things had been different. Bree had been the pretty, pampered, delicate one, the blond-haired, blue-eyed doll, and Polly her younger, tougher, dirtier accomplice. The four-year age difference hadn’t seemed so important then, since they both liked to draw and dance and, mostly, play in the woods behind their house. Beneath the solemn pines and flashy cottonwoods, Bree crowned herself princess of the green kingdom and made Polly her woodland fairy—the one who must constantly be on guard to save her sister from dragons, trolls, and other assorted dangers. Polly never minded. She was strong, and Bree was beautiful. They each had their place.

But then Bree turned sixteen, and declared such games pathetic. The new Evil Bree stopped talking to Polly entirely and hid like a mole in her dark bedroom, coming out only when their mom confronted her with the pills she’d found in her coat pocket or when Aaron Sykes showed up. Bree braved daylight for her boyfriend, maybe because Aaron Sykes brought a cloud with him everywhere he went. He wore all black and had a halo of darkness around his head that stretched even farther, a bleakness that gave Polly the creeps. He mumbled and smelled funny, and Polly’s parents said they didn’t trust him, which instantly made Bree love him more.

As soon as she started dating him, Bree began to dress like Aaron, hold her cigarette between her thumb and forefinger the way he did, sample his favorite drugs. It took no time at all to complete her transformation from girl to Aaron’s shadow, as if love wasn’t measured in goodness and devotion but in how much you’d give up for a person, how far you’d sink.

*** At least the bottom came quickly. Three months after they started going out, Aaron dumped Bree for another girl-shadow, and Bree came home in tears. Trembling, inconsolable, Bree became the princess in need of saving again, except that now Polly couldn’t help her anymore, and she didn’t want to. They might have been sisters, but Bree had made it clear they were going it alone.

Polly’s mother said, “Thank God,” but in truth after the breakup things only got worse. Bree may have lost the boyfriend but she kept his bad habits. She still wore black, ditched school, took even riskier drugs, like she was really proving her love now, disintegrating over someone who didn’t even want her. Evil Bree was still pretty as a doll, but the horror-film kind—an inanimate object that comes to life for the sole purpose of destroying everything.

Now the mattress hardly budged as Bree sat on the bed. After Aaron, she had started losing weight. Down, down, down, like Alice through the rabbit hole, until she was a hundred pounds, starting to grow fur like an animal fighting to keep warm, and suddenly popular. Her phone rang day and night; even thugs like Brad Meyer called to ask her out. Now that Bree was bent on destroying herself, she was apparently a girl worth getting to know.

*** “Polly?”

Polly peeked out through half-closed lids when the fairy began to cry. Bree clasped a handful of dandelion stems, their puffy white seeds long gone now that fall had come on. Maybe she’d listened to their grandmother after all and knew that instead of banishing dandelions from the lawn, you could eat the delicious young leaves or cure almost anything with the milky juice in the root.

Polly said nothing. There were no words left except cruel ones, and Polly had said all of those.

“Polly?” the fairy said once more. “You know when you love someone, you think they’ll never hurt you? It’s not true, Polly. When Aarooooon left me, I wished I’d died.”

Polly squeezed her eyes shut again. She wished she could shut her ears, too. She didn’t want to hear this. Didn’t Bree get that? It was like Bree kept dragging her onto a roller coaster she wasn’t tall enough to ride.

Think of fairies, Polly thought. Imagine the one on the bed flying away.

Editorial Reviews

"A fine story of magic and fantasy evolves in a fine read for young adults who want uplifting adventure" - Midwest Book Review

"This is exactly the kind of book I would have loved as a teenager. It emphasizes the healing power of animals and nature which has helped so many young people cope with their problems all over the world. It will help young readers to understand that it is okay to be different. And that every individual can play a role in making this a better world." - Dr. Jane Goodall, DBE, Founder of the Jane Goodall Institute

"It's Dean's celebration of the earthy, living magic that exists 'everywhere, in everything, all the time' that will lure YAs, who may be especially fascinated by the deepened experience of the world Polly gleans from her ability to glimpse others' auras. Dean even includes training instructions for readers hoping to see auras, too. Offer this to readers drawn by Wiccan spiritualities-never mentioned here by name, but which seem to inform Dean's richly green-tinted storytelling, rooted in the connections between wild places and womanly strength." - Booklist

"Polly's unflinching belief in beauty and the power...to change...destinies marries well with the optimistic tone of the novel." - Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books

"Beautifully written and with vibrant imagery, this book will strike a chord with anyone who has found magic and solace in their own secluded spot of wilderness." - TeensReadToo

From the Publisher

Dean's first YA novel feels of-the-moment with its hopeful environmentalist message. At its start, Polly, the earthy, wistful 12-year-old protagonist, wakes up to find her teenage sister, wild child Bree, missing. The search goes on in the background as Polly and her friends fight to keep the bulldozers away from her beloved forest, a magical place where Bree could be hiding. Each chapter opens with a description of a medicinal and edible plant that Polly and her wise grandmother find in those woods. This premise sometimes bogs down with mentions of Bree's clichéd problems. But mostly Dean succeeds in creating a fast-paced story and sympathetic characters that eco-minded readers will appreciate. In their deep woods hideout, called Girlwood, Polly and pals uncover secrets about themselves and their world. "The forest could have been Fairyland... the dawn sky like a field of tulips, the new snow twinkling pink, green, and blue, as if even the ground they walked on was enchanted," Dean writes in a typically lush passage. The best wrought element of the book, though, may not be in the forest at all-it might be the satisfying ending. Ages 12-up. (May)

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Publishers Weekly

Gr 6-8- Twelve-year-old Polly is beset by trouble in her rural Idaho home. Her parents have divorced, and her punk and probably pregnant older sister, Bree, has run away. Her former friend's father is bulldozing the majestic larch trees of the old forest to "make the woods more accessible" to rich dwellers in a new gated community. But, Polly can see auras; understands the herbal teachings of her New Age grandmother, Baba; and uses her talents as best she can to forestall the inevitable destruction. Believing Bree is hiding in the forest, she leaves offerings throughout the winter. Herbal teachings-some dangerous, with warnings for would-be experimenters-begin each chapter. But Baba uses herbal teas to drug Polly's overwrought mother several times, and with few exceptions, adults behave abominably and stupidly. The natural details may ring true but the stereotypical narrow-mindedness of the rural community is unchallenged and the New Agey tone will put off many readers.-Susan Hepler, formerly at Burgundy Farm Country Day School, Alexandria, VA

School Library Journal

Despite its genuinely gorgeous cover and illustrations, this story and its characters never come to life on the page. Twelve-year-old Polly loves the woods around her Idaho home, where her dad has moved to a cabin and her grandmother Baba gathers wild plants for healing. Polly's older sister Bree, deep into drugs and boys, disappears, and over the winter Polly and Baba leave food and clothing for her in a secluded part of the forest called Girlwood. Polly has a lot to cope with: mean girls at school, her best friend's betrayal, her parents' separation and the developer who plans to bulldoze the forest to build a gated community. There is way too much telling rather than showing and an overabundance of preaching about plant life and ecology, all of it overlaid with Polly's ability, never fully integrated into the story, to see people's auras and the wood fairies of her father's stories. The Lessons are writ large, but the tale itself is a wisp writ small. (Fiction. 12+)

Kirkus Reviews