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Summary
Summary
A heart-wrenching novel in verse about a poor girl surviving the Irish Land Wars, by a two-time Newbery Honor-winning author.
For Anna, the family farm has always been home... But now, things are changing.
Anna's mother has died, and her older siblings have emigrated, leaving Anna and her father to care for a young sister with special needs. And though their family has worked this land for years, they're in danger of losing it as poor crop yields leave them without money to pay their rent.
When a violent encounter with the Lord's rent collector results in Anna and her father's arrest, all seems lost. But Anna sees her chance and bolts from the jailhouse. On the run, Anna must rely on her own inner strength to protect her sister--and try to find a way to save her family.
Written in verse, A Slip of a Girl is a poignant story of adversity, resilience, and self-determination by a master of historical fiction, painting a haunting history of the tensions in the Irish countryside of the early 1890s, and the aftermath of the Great Famine.
A Junior Library Guild Selection
A Bank Street Best Book of the Year
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 (4)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Giff loosely based the tenacious heroine of this profoundly moving novel on her great-grandmother, who was raised in the town in Ireland where the Drumlish Land War of 1881 took place. In taut free verse, the author writes in the voice of fiercely patriotic Anna Mallon, whose family is torn apart as tension mounts between English landlords and Irish tenants, who are forcibly evicted after failing to pay unfairly escalating rents. After three of Anna's siblings depart in search of a better life in Brooklyn, her frail mother dies hours after beseeching Anna to read and to keep her baby sister Nuala safe. The girl honors both requests; she learns to read from the local schoolmaster and escapes, with Nuala in her arms, after English bailiffs arrest her for insubordination. Anna's simultaneous desperation and determination are palpable as she carries Nuala for days, barefoot, cold, and near starvation, to reach the safe home of an elderly aunt. Archival photos illuminate the loss and injustice inflicted on the Irish, and Giff (Lily's Crossing) brings Anna's story to a triumphant close. Ages 10--14. (Aug.)
Horn Book Review
In late-nineteenth-century Ireland, the Mallon family struggles to stay in their home and farm their landland now controlled by an English earl determined to evict them by raising rents and taxes. With her dying words, Mam entrusts her eldest daughter, Anna, to care for her sister Nuala (slow to speak, / slow to understand), their house, and the land. Helpless, hungry, and angry, Anna throws a rock at the earls manor house, breaks a window, and is arrested. She escapes, grabs Nuala, and travels for miles to find sanctuary with an aunt. Along the way, they encounter others evicted from their homes and desperate to survive. Through spare, elegant verse, Anna relates her struggles with the English, showing her humiliation (They drag us down, and push our faces into the mud. / Were trussed up / like spring lambs, / and shoved into their cart) and her resolve (The soldiers try to march / through us. / They point their bayonets. / But we stand firm). Giff employs small incidents, such as the carding of wool or Annas rationing potatoes, to create a substantial setting, while archival photographs sprinkled throughout link these moments to the conditions of the larger community and history. Appended with a glossary and an authors note describing Giffs Irish lineage. Betty Carter January/February 2020 p.88(c) Copyright 2020. The Horn Book, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Kirkus Review
Young Anna narrates in lilting, free verse her trials, tribulations, and triumphs during the 1881 Land War in Drumlish, Ireland."Sounds," the first of 31 short chapters in the book's first section, starts with high drama. While outside pulling up chickweed for tea, Anna hears screams and a crashing sound. "Dust rises up: / the house of five girls / and a mam is gone. / They're forced out on the road, / maybe to starve." Readers soon learn that English aristocrats have seized Irish properties, feeling empowered to arbitrarily raise rents and raze dwellings. However, what compels further reading is an immediate bond with Anna. Giff has the rare gift of using few wordsbut exactly the right onesto evoke strong and varied images and feelings. Readers will be riveted as Anna tries her hardest to live up to her dying mam's requests: that Anna take care of her developmentally disabled little sister, Nuala; keep the family's home safe; and learn to read. There are several episodes of gripping suspense, including Anna and Nuala's fugitive flight to Aunt Ethna's house and encounters between a bailiff and a justifiably angry crowd. There are also tender and humorous moments. Traditional customs and language are woven into the tale as deftly as Aunt Ethna weaves at her loom. Despite the value attached to reading, it is a different skill that enables Anna to earn moneya welcome, realistic plot point. Characters all present white.Lovely. (glossary, photographs, author's note) (Historical verse fiction. 10-14) Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
Anna Mallon has seen the potato blight destroy her family's crop again and watched her brothers leave Ireland for America. Her mother grows weak and dies, while the English earl's agents drive neighbors from their homes. Her sister Jane emigrates, leaving Anna, her little sister Nuala, and her father to carry on with little food and dwindling prospects. Though she wants nothing more than to remain in the home built by Mallon hands / four hundred years ago, Anna lashes out, throwing a rock at the earl's house. With Nuala, she flees toward a distant town, where they find refuge. Although the family's suffering recalls the plight of characters in Giff's Nory Ryan's Song (2000), who also endured the Great Hunger, this affecting novel ends differently, with an uprising against the English and Anna returning home to stay. An author's note comments on the Land War. Written in free verse, the story moves quickly, but the clarity of the writing and the images created leave strong impressions of the characters and settings. The subtly shifting emotional tenor of the narrative ranges from pensive to sorrowful and from desperate to hopeful. At intervals, archival photos offer windows into the time and place. A vivid, involving historical novel.--Carolyn Phelan Copyright 2010 Booklist
