Willa and Old Miss Annie (Racers) - Softcover

Berlie Doherty has written many books for young people and has twice won the Carnegie Medal - for Granny Was a Buffer Girl and Dear Nobody. Her other titles include The Midnight Man, Willa and Old Miss Annie (Highly Commended for the 1995 Carnegie Medal) and the picture book anthology Tales of Magic and Wonder. She also writes poetry and plays, and has adapted her own books for television and radio. Kim Lewis was shortlisted for the Kate Greenaway Medal for her first picture book, The Shepherd Boy. She has since written and illustrated several more rural tales - Emma's Lamb, Floss, First Snow, The Last Train, My Friend Harry, One Summer Day, Friends, Just Like Floss, Little Baa and A Quilt For Baby - set on the Northumberland sheep farm where she lives with her husband and two children.

A fine author who won Carnegie medals in both 1987 and 1992 for YA novels re-creates the sensibilities of a young child in three linked stories. After moving to ``a big town, far away,'' Willa is lonely. When she meets Miss Annie, her bent, twisted old hands frighten Willa and she doesn't understand her words, ``so tiny that you could hardly hear them. They were more like secrets.'' Willa thinks Miss Annie has a ``ghost'' in her garden; at night, the white form resembles one, but it's really a lonely goat; by the time Willa and Miss Annie find him an appropriate home the two are friends. In the long central chapter they happen on a pony that has nearly died after being tethered and abandoned--a heartwrenching animal story tempered by its happy outcome and the gritty, satirical characterizations of the villains. ``Vicky Fox'' presents the sad probabilities inherent in trying to keep a wild pet and the differing perceptions of old and young towards possession and friendship between humans and animals; here Willa makes another friend, her own age. Astutely observed, elegantly crafted, and easily read, these thoughtful stories deserve a place beside Phillipa Pearce's A Dog So Small and Dick King-Smith's Sophie books. (Fiction. 6-10) -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.