Available in Bookstores October 14, 2008

   Miranda has no recollection of where she came from-only that years ago, a gust of wind deposited her outside Bourne Manor. The Manor's sole inhabitant, Wysteria Barrows, took Miranda in and promptly outfitted her with special boots-boots weighted with steel bars to keep Miranda anchored to the ground. But aside from shelter and clothing, Miranda receives little warmth from the aging widow. The Manor, too, is a cold place, full of drafts and locked doors. Full of menace. Full of secrets. Then one day a boy named Farley appears, and with his help, Miranda embraces her destiny with the wind...and uncovers the Manor's hidden past.  

Honors

Junior Library Guild Selection

Reviews

" Echoes of Hawthorne's House of Seven Gables run through this tale, which abounds with literary allusions. ...(Readers) will adore the setting, Miranda's soaring, literary voice and the dreamy fantasy-meets-reality plot.
-Kirkus Review

Rita Murphy's short, sweet novel Bird (Delacorte Books for Young Readers, October 2008) was the perfect accompaniment to the gray, rainy weather that began my beachside vacation. As is the case in Rita's previous novels (and I've read and enjoyed all of them), this magical story has a beautiful, airy quality that's tempered by a slightly sinister edge. I loved floating along with the main character, Miranda, a girl who's been living in a towering old house ever since the wind blew her to its doorstep and its owner outfitted her with steel-weighted boots to keep her from being swept away again. I thoroughly enjoyed watching the secrets in this book unravel and, try as I did, I didn't manage to solve the final mystery on its pages before its solution was revealed to me. (I love it when that happens.) One further note of praise for Bird: I LOVE the jacket design for this book. I loved it before I read it (it was part of the reason I moved the galley to the top of my pile), and I love it even more having finished the book. I wish all covers could be this enticing and this well-suited to their material.