The Grace of Wild Things

Written by Heather Fawcett

Balzer + Bray (HarperCollins)

978-0-06-314262-6

360 pp.

Ages 8-13

February, 2023

Grace Greene, who has been raised in the Rose & Ivy Home for Unwarded Children in Charlottetown since being abandoned by her parents, is determined to find a home with the witch who lives in the woods at Brook-By-the-Sea. The freckled twelve-year-old with a great imagination and love of words and reading is sure the witch will help her develop her own magical gifts. Grace just needs some guidance, especially as she is convinced she is the bad kind of witch because she can make people's see their worst memories. Though the witch, known to her neighbours as Miss Evelyn Puddlestone, is reluctant to have anything to do with Grace, she gives in when Grace shows some skills. She agrees to train Grace if the child can prove her gift is great, casting every spell in the witch's grimoire before the next blooming of an old cherry tree in spring. That leaves the child only nine to ten months to cast one hundred and a half spells or the witch would claim of all Grace's magic for her own.

With her poetry-loving crow Windweaver and the accidental help of a fairy she calls Rum, Grace begins to make herself at home at the witch's cottage. She is befriended by Sareena Khalil who lives at the farm next door with her parents and four-year-old sister invisible-pretending Daisy Bean. With the help of the children, her crow, and the fairy, Grace begins to make her way through the challenging grimoire. 

But, like a famous red-haired orphan of PEI to whom Heather Fawcett pays homage, Grace runs into trouble time and time again. She always intends to do good and behave but her temper sometimes gets the better of her, especially when she is criticized for her looks or behaviour. There's the snarky Mrs. Charity Crumley upon whom she spills ice cream that is now milked from their cow. There's the bully Poppy whom Grace goes after for making younger children cry. And there's the unfortunate brewing of a potion that spills on Sareena and leaves her drunk. 

 

Still, Grace is tenacious about making a home for herself at Brook-By-the-Sea. With her big heart and good intentions like helping heal the ill witch and deal with a woman claiming the witch as a squatter on her land, Grace has much work ahead of her.

For fans of Anne of Green Gables, the story of The Grace of Wild Things is rich with familiar elements of L. M. Montgomery's classic novel of the PEI orphan looking for a true home. She's freckled and imaginative, talkative, passionate, and sensitive. She has altercations with a local busybody, puts her friendship at risk by accident, and makes a friend of a former bully. But The Grace of Wild Things is much more than just an homage to Anne of Green Gables as those unfamiliar with the classic Canadian novel will instantly recognize. Heather Fawcett writes a fantastic story of magic, challenges, friendship, and home. The writing is superb, eloquent in its heart and richness of language.

Do you think one can have too much imagination? It seems to me it's rather like having too much lemon shortbread or too many flowers in your garden. After all, if you have too little imagination, you'd spend your life finding fault with everything, like Mrs. Spencer does, instead of noticing that there are beautiful things in the world alongside the horrible ones. (pg. 17)

Heather Fawcett, the acclaimed author of The Language of Ghosts and Ember and the Ice Dragons, blends fantasy with the mundane and creates a world in which an orphan seeks home and magical guidance. Forget the parallels with Anne of Green Gables and you still have an extraordinary story of courage and friendship, albeit swaddled in magic. With complex characters who are neither good nor bad and whose demeanours speak of human frailties and strengths, Heather Fawcett helps readers see themselves in those characters. Grace's story may be her own–unique from Anne herself–but, like the rest of us, she is looking for connection and purpose. With the help of the witch, her new friends and even an adversary or two, Grace becomes the witch she was always meant to be.