Melody Murray's Books

This one held up to re-reading a little better than did My Daughter, Nicola, but there was a creepy Daddy Long Legs vibe to this that was a little off-putting. The scary, almost supernatural, thread that runs through so many of Arthur's books was a little more developed here in the character of Miss Laura. The subplot about the protagonist's dark skin was unsatisfactory in a lot of ways- I got that Meg felt like there was prejudice because of that, but there wasn't any external supporting evidence in the story. This book is the first place I ever encountered an autistic child, back when autism was comparatively rare. As you might surmise from this wildly scattered review, there's a LOT going on in this book. It's good but not splendid- Arthur's best are so much better than this one, it suffers in comparison. 2.5