Lauren Wolk has been shortlisted for the Carnegie Award before, so the question is will her latest novel Echo Mountain be more successful than her first? Well we can’t tell you that, but we can say that we thoroughly enjoyed this tale. Set during the Great Depression in the United States, we join Ellie and her family as they move from their city lives to the mountainside. We follow Ellie’s journey as she becomes familiar with the natural world, meets the mountain’s other inhabitants, and learns about healing to save her father… and the hag on the hill. Our Thirds group admired how George Ermos’s cover art captured the adventure and spirit of the story, talked about the animals we would carve to gift to others, and discussed which of the characters we most related to – admitting that while we would like to be as brave as Ellie, we were probably more like her nervous elder sister Esther who longed to return to the comforts of town. We all agreed it was a satisfying read and are looking forward to our next adventure.

Our older reading group’s choice was a gruesome tale about an invading tox, which Miss Lawrence did not quite have the stomach for. Featuring a girls’ school that has been infected by an unknown entity with an undertone of conspiracy, this book was found to be a page turner. Narration flits between the characters and it is possible that this led to the disjointed nature of some of the character development. We discussed whether horror can be a catharsis that helps to relieve fear and dystopian literature in general. As always this brought us back to The Hunger Games.

Next we will be reading two more candidates for the Carnegie Award 2021 – The Girl Who Speaks Bear and The Girl Who Became a Tree.