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Summary
Summary
Nory Ryan's family has lived on Maidin Bay on the west coast of Ireland for generations, raising a pig and a few chickens, planting potatoes, getting by. Every year Nory's father goes away on a fishing boat and returns with the rent money for the English lord who owns their cottage and fields, the English lord bent upon forcing the Irish from their land so he can tumble the cottages and clear the fields for grazing. Times are never easy on Maidin Bay, but this year, a terrible blight attacks the potatoes. No crop means starvation. Twelve-year-old Nory must summon the courage and ingenuity to find food, to find hope, to find a way to help her family survive.
Author Notes
Patricia Reilly Giff was born in Brooklyn, New York on April 26, 1935. She knew she wanted to be a writer, even as a little girl. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Education from Marymount College, a Master's of Arts from St. John's University, and a Professional Diploma in Reading and a Doctorate of Humane Letters from Hofstra University.
After she graduated from college, she taught in the public schools in New York City until 1960 and then in the public schools in Elmont, New York from 1964 until 1971. She then became a reading consultant before finally, at the age of 40, deciding to write a book. She also worked as an educational consultant for Dell Yearling and Young Yearling Books and as an advisor and instructor to aspiring writers. Her first book, Today Was a Terrible Day, was published in 1980. She is the author of more than 100 children's books, as well as a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers.
Together with her husband, Giff opened "The Dinosaur's Paw," a children's bookstore named after one of her own stories. She is the author of the Polk Street School books. Lily's Crossing, about the homefront during World War II, was named a Newberry Honor Book by the American Library Association as well as an ALA Notable Book for Children. The novel also won the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award Honor. Her companion book to Lily's Crossing, Genevieve's War, won a 2018 Christopher Award. Pictures of Hollis Woods was also named a Newberry Honor Book and Nory Ryan's Song was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults.
Patricia Reilly Giff died on June 22, 2021. She was 86.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
Horn Book Review
Life is unraveling for young Nory Ryan as her family endures the hardships created by the 1845 potato famine in an isolated village along the western coast of Ireland. Narrator Susan Lynch's musical lilt evokes the essential rhythms of daily life set against a dark counterpoint of tragedy. She weaves together as well the varied emotional strands-despair, stubborn determination, anger, fear, courage, and hope-that give texture and substance to the book's sometimes thinly realized historical backdrop. This is one of those rare audio productions that transforms an ordinary text into extraordinary. (c) Copyright 2010. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. All rights reserved.
School Library Journal Review
Gr 5-8-Set at the beginning of the Irish Potato Famine in 1845, this survival story is told by lively, 12-year-old Nory Ryan. She shares a small dwelling with her family, hens, and a pig in a subsistence-farming village on the country's west-central coast. They are anxiously awaiting the return of their Da, who has gone to sea to earn money. Their English landlord is evicting tenants who cannot pay rent, forcing them into the streets, and destroying their thatch-roofed huts. Hunger is common before blight destroys the potato crop; with no potatoes, the people face starvation. The Ryans are eager to join the lucky ones who have obtained passage to America. Nory's observations of the land, cliffs, sea, and people in her community are woven with poignant memories and realistic conversations that vividly re-create this tragic period in Ireland's history. The child grows in strength and courage as she seeks food for her family and friends. The fast pace might occasionally force readers to pause and assimilate the details she shares, and to seek out more information. The book opens with a list of Irish words with definitions and pronunciation guide. Today's readers will appreciate this compelling story with a wonderful female protagonist who is spirited and resourceful, and has a song in her heart.-Laura Scott, Baldwin Public Library, Birmingham, MI (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
"Giff meticulously re-creates the Great Hunger as she traces a 19th-century Irish girl's struggle to survive," wrote PW. Ages 8-12. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Gr. 4^-7. From the first scene on a cliff's edge, the characters in Giff's latest novel balance perilously between survival and loss. Set on the west coast of Ireland during the great famine, the story belongs to 12-year-old Nory, who lives with her grandfather, two sisters, and a small brother in a tiny, earthen-floor home. Like most of their neighbors, the Ryans eke out a subsistence living, but when the potatoes begin to rot, that tenuous stability disintegrates, the family disperses, and Nory is left behind to care for her younger brother. Nory fights against starvation, scaling cliff walls for bird eggs, battling violent townspeople, and making broths with Anna, an aging local herbalist with whom Nory becomes exceptionally close. At the last moment, tickets for America arrive from Nory's father, and she leaves for her new life. The finely paced novel balances the physical and emotional horrors of famine--described in visceral detail--with Nory's courage and intelligence, the love she has for her family, and her close friendship with Sean, a local boy. No notes are provided, so children with some basic historical background will glean the most from the story. But Giff brings the landscape and the cultural particulars of the era vividly to life and creates in Nory a heroine to cheer for. A beautiful, heart-wrenching novel that makes a devastating event understandable. --Gillian Engberg
Kirkus Review
Newbery Medal-winner Giff (Lily's Crossing, 1997, etc.) weaves wisps of history into this wrenching tale of an Irish family sundered by the Great Potato Famine. The three Ryan sisters, their mother dead and their ""da"" away at sea, are struggling to make ends meet and care for old Granda and three-year-old Patrick, as their predatory English landlord waits for his rent on one side and America's golden promise glitters over the horizon on the other. Heralded by an ominous odor, blight sweeps through the potato fields, wiping out the crops overnight. Through young Nory's eyes, the aptly named Great Hunger is devastatingly real: not only do livestock and grain disappear, but so do shellfish and kelp, and finally even nettles and other weeds. Families are mercilessly driven from their homes, the dead are buried without ceremony, and little Patrick becomes ever thinner and more pitiable. Grasping at a sudden chance, big sister Maggie takes off for America, then Granda and teenage Celia set out for Galway, hoping to meet Da on the docks--leaving Nory to care for Patrick, and for old Anna Donnelly, a neighbor with a tragic past, as well. Nory makes the hardest sacrifice of all when an emigrating family invites her along and she sends Patrick in her place. So grim is the picture Giff draws that readers are likely to be startled by the sudden turnaround at the end, when news of Da's reappearance brings ship's passage for all and the prospect of a happy reunion in New York. Still, Nory's patient, stubborn endurance lights up this tale, and the promise of better times to come is well deserved. Riveting. (Fiction. 11-13) Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
CHAPTER 1 Someone was calling. "Nor-ry. Nor-ry Ryan." I was halfway along the cliff road. With the mist coming up from the sea, everything on the path below had disappeared. "Wait, Nory." I stopped. "Sean Red Mallon?" I called back, hearing his footsteps now. "I have something for us," he said as he reached me. He pulled a crumpled bit of seaweed out of his pocket to dangle in front of my nose. "Dulse." I took a breath. The smell of the sea was in it salty and sweet. I was so hungry I could almost feel the taste of it on my tongue. "Shall we eat it here?" he asked, grinning, his red hair a mop on his forehead. "It'll be over and gone in no time," I said, and pointed up. "We'll go to Patrick's Well." We reached the top of the cliffs with the rain on our heads. " I am Queen Maeve ," I sang, twirling away from the edge. " Queen of old Ireland ." I loved the sound of my voice in the fog, but then I loved anything that had to do with music: the Ballilee church bells tolling, the rain pattering on the stones, even the carra-crack of the gannets calling as they flew overhead. I scrambled up to Mary's Rock. As the wind tore the mist into shreds, I could see the sea, gray as a selkie's coat, stretching itself from Ireland to Brooklyn, New York, America. Sean came up in back of me. "We will be there one day in Brooklyn." I nodded, but I couldn't imagine it. Free in Brooklyn. Sean's sister, Mary Mallon, was there right now. Someone had written a letter for her, and Father Harte had read it to us. Horses clopped down the road, she said, bringing milk in huge cans. And no one was ever hungry. Even the sound of it was wonderful. Brook-lyn. The rain ran along the ends of my hair and into my neck. I shook my head to make the drops fly and thought of my da on a ship, the rain running down his long dark hair too. Da, who was far away, fishing to pay the rent. He had been gone for weeks, and it would be months before he came home again. I swallowed, wishing for Da so hard I had to turn my head to hide my face from Sean. I blew a secret kiss across the waves; then we picked our way up the steep little path to Patrick's Well. We sat ourselves down on one of the flat stones around the well and leaned over to look into the water. People with money threw in coins to sink to the bottom. Granda said that might be why it took so long for those prayers to be answered. But not many people had coins to drop into the well. Instead there was the tree overhead. People tied their prayers to the branches: a piece of tattered skirt, the edge of a collar. "I see my mother's apron string." Sean pointed up as he tore a bit of dulse in two and handed me half. I nodded, sucking on a curly edge. I looked up at the tree. A strip of my middle sister Celia's shift was hanging there. Now, what did that one want? She had no shame. There it was, a piece of her underwear left to wag in the wind until it rotted away. Every creature who walked by would be gaping at it. I stood up quickly, moving around to the other side of the well to look down at our glen. The potato fields were covered with purple blossoms now, and stone walls zigzagged up and down between them. And then, something else. "Sean," I said, "what's happening down there?" Absently he tore the last bit of dulse in two. "Men," he said slowly. "Bailiffs with a battering ram. Someone is being put out of a house." Someone. I knew who it was. A quick flash of the beggar, Cat Neely, her curly hair covering most of her face. And Cat's mother, who sat in their yard, teeth gone, cheeks sunken, with no money to pay the rent. "Don't think about it," Sean said, his hand on my shoulder, his face sad. "There's nothing can be done." "Coins," I said. "If only someone--" I broke off. I knew it myself. No one in the glen had an extra penny. Not Sean's family. Not mine. My older sister Maggie and Sean's brother Francey were saving every bit they could to get married. But even that would take years. The dulse on my tongue tasted bitter now. Cunningham, the English lord, owned all our land, all our houses; he could put any of us out if he wanted. And now it would be Cat and her mother. There was someone with a coin, I knew that. Anna Donnelly. Sean and I were afraid of her. He had said that one of the sidhe might live under her table. I shuddered, thinking of those beings from the other world. Tangles of gray hair, bony fingers pointing, crouched in the darkness . Anna had her magic, too. She could heal up a wen on the finger, or straighten a bone with her weeds, but only when she wanted to. And she hadn't saved my mam the day my little brother, Patch, was born. That Anna Donnelly had a coin. And I was the only one that knew about it. I thought of the day I had stopped near her house. The thatch on her roof was old and plants grew green over the top. And there was Anna outside, teetering on a stool, her white hair in wisps around the edge of her cap. She had peered over her shoulder, her face as wrinkled as last year's potatoes, then held something up before she shoved it deep into the thatch. I had seen the glint of it, the shine. The coin. And in my mind now: I could save Cat Neely and her mother. If only Anna would give me that coin. Suddenly my mouth was dry. I turned to Sean. "Thank you for the dulse," I said, and left him there, mouth open, as I flew down the path away from the cliff. From the Hardcover edition. Excerpted from Nory Ryan's Song by Patricia Reilly Giff All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
