Behind the Attic Wall [B0641]

1985 PB reprint of the 1983 original, 315-pages. At twelve, Maggie had been thrown out of more boarding schools than she cared to remember. "Impossible to handle," they said -- nasty, mean, disobedient, rebellious, thieving -- anything they could say to explain why she must be removed from the school. Maggie was thin and pale, with shabby clothes and stringy hair, when she arrived at her new home. "It was a mistake to bring her here," said Maggie's great-aunts, whose huge stone house looked like another boarding school -- or a prison. But they took her in anyway. After all, aside from Uncle Morris, they were Maggie's only living relatives. But from behind the closet door in the great and gloomy house, Maggie hears the faint whisperings, the beckoning voices. And in the forbidding house of her ancestors, Maggie finds magic...the kind that lets her, for the first time, love and be loved.

From recent Amazon/GoodReads reviews: "I'm so glad I rediscovered this. The story is as compelling as I remember--and a great deal more complex than I realized at the time. The writing is also wonderful, rich and full of lighthearted wordplay which contrasts with the much darker subject. This book deserves to be better-remembered in the pantheon of children's literature than it is!"; "This book haunted me for years and I was glad that I reread it. I now understand the story a metaphor about trauma and not the possibility of haunted dolls."; "I've read this book repeatedly over my 42 years. It is consistently a wonderful read. It's almost like a more spooky version of 'The secret garden'. It's a wonderful read for children but still incredibly good as an adult. If you have a child who loves to read, this one is fantastic and magical."; "This was one of my childhood favorites in the 80s. Rereading as a middle-aged woman with kids of my own, the experience is so different. I only recalled the magic. I had forgotten the tragedy of Maggie's life and her existence as an orphan, shuttled from place to place, a hard shell of a girl who made herself unlikeable to fend off the hurt of constant rejection. I also forgot about the ending, and it was surprising in its magical epilogue. Perfect."; ""