Two years into the coronavirus pandemic, at a time when local government meetings descend into shouting matches and teachers and public servants face threats on the job, some writers for young readers have taken up the question of repair.
What would it mean to restore a sense of community? To repair our civic life? To pull us out of this fractious and dangerous chasm that seems to widen by the week?
That question animates Minneapolis writer Kelly Barnhill's new middle-grade novel, "The Ogress and the Orphans."
The town of Stone-in-the-Glen was once a marvel. Its streets were lined with fruit trees, its civic life vibrant, its residents quick to help anyone in need.
But then a terrible fire destroyed the town's library. Not long after, the town's school also burned down, families began to flee and others began to hoard what little they had left.
At the town's Orphan House, four young people try to make sense of the loss. Anthea solves problems methodically, Bartleby is a philosopher, Elijah a storyteller and Cass a quiet fixer of what needs mending.
They have an anonymous ally, an ogress who has moved into an abandoned farm, who senses she's found a town where people need her and delivers treats to residents' doorsteps in the middle of the night.
But the town also has a mayor who speaks in glittering generalities, who basks in the worship of the crowd, who seeks problems that he alone can fix, and continually drums up donations for himself.
