About this title: Twelve-year-old Maggie, pale and unwanted, is the unwilling ward of two eccentric great-aunts, who live in an old house filled with creepy noises. While trying to find the source of these disturbing sounds, Maggie discovers a secret room in the attic occupied by a family of dolls who become her "family."
Note: This is a general synopsis. Each listing is described below.
Binding: Trade Paperback
Publisher: Avon, New York
Date Published: 1983
ISBN-13:9780380698431ISBN:0380698439
Description: Very Good. Each room held a secret especially the one behind the attic wall. Spine creased. Old sticker price on first page. 315 pp. read more
Binding: Trade paperback
Publisher: Avon Books
Date Published: 1985
ISBN-13:9780380698431ISBN:0380698439
Description: Very good. No dust jacket as issued. top right front corner creased, light wear to edges of cover; text and binding fine. Trade paperback (US). Glued binding. 315 p. Avon Camelot Books (Paperback). Audience: Children/juvenile. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: HarperCollins
Date Published: 1985
ISBN-13:9780380698431ISBN:0380698439
Description: Acceptable. Overall below average used book. May have highlighting, underlining, notes, price sticker on cover, or be an ex-library book. read more
"Creepiest kids book ever! I when I was 10 or 11. Something reminded me of it recently so I looked it up. Then I looked up this review which I wholeheartedly agree with.
Are you kidding me with this? There's scary and creepy, and then there's this, which gave me nightmares. I don't do well with talking dolls. I purposely never watched the Chucky movies, I avoided Teddy Ruxpin as a child, and the "Talking Tina" episode of the Twilight Zone is one of the scariest. Maggie is a sickly orphan and sent to live with unknown relatives. Very Secret Garden, right? She's sent to live at a boarding school owned by two sisters, except no one is at the school anymore. So creepy red flag number one.
Maggie starts hearing voices that no one else can hear, and she and everyone else thinks she is crazy. As Hermione Granger would say, "Hearing voices is never a good sign." Til one day she finds a hidden attic where there are dolls that are walking and talking. Instead of running away, arms flailing, she starts to hang out with the dolls, who are an older couple with a dog. See cover. They have fun time adventures, which include a picnic with wood pieces serving as bread and butter. Through the love of the dolls, she learns to love and opens up to others more.Turns out the dolls are haunted and animated by the ghosts of a dead couple that used to live in the house. Or something.
Then one day her aunts find the room and as soon as they are seen, the dolls fall down dead and don't move. For days. So not only do you have walking and talking dolls, but now you have dead corpse dolls. Eventually the dolls come back to life and all is well and everyone lives happily ever after. Yikes.
There are only a few things that really scared me as a child. They were:
this book Large Marge showing Pee Wee what the people who fell off the top of the Empire State building in a truck looked like as they were pulled out of the wreckage the corpse of the dead kid in Stand By Me Genesis' "Land of Confusion" video Talking Heads "Blind" video )you can't find it online- thank god"
"I read this book for the first time in 6th grade. I remember reading it and getting a little creeped out but still liking the story. It's kind of what any girl wishes would come true. It is still a story that I think about once in awhile."
"Even though it didn't freak me out as a kid at all, the idea of largish talking china dolls actually creeps me out as an adult. I did like the silliness of Uncle Morris, but this wasn't as good on the re-read as others. Also, iffyness with a brief "Gypsy" metaphor. I did really love it in 3rd or 4th grade though."
"Well, I finished it. That might be about all I can say that's very good about this book. I really didn't like it at all. I wanted too...and goodness knows I normally really love a good juvie lit hit but wow...it drove me nuts. There were all these completely tired plot elements (the heroine is a sickly, ugly orphan who is sent to live with her crazy, uncaring maiden aunts after bouncing around various orphanages...etc) then there were all kinds of horribly jarring historical inaccuracies. Like the heroine is always wearing old fashioned stiff wool dresses and uses button hooks on her shoes and yet she has a scene where she fantasizes about playing basketball like she remembers doing at a previous school. What the heck? That kind of thing drove me nuts. I think the worst thing about the book though was that the big secret that the book dangles in front of you for chapters and chapters is "What in the world is going on in the attic????" (ghosts? vagrants hiding out? fairies or other magical creatures?) and then the resolve it with "Nope! Just some weird dolls that are alive mysteriously!" So odd and so disappointing. I felt totally gypped. Really, dolls? And then they try to give the dolls meaning at the end by implying that the dolls are inhabited by the souls of previous residents and when her lovely wacky uncle (the only character I really liked in the story) dies he becomes a new doll. So lame. I'm sorry. I really wanted to get into it but, honestly I feel cheated that I finished the book and thereby wasted so much time reading it. Just goes to show Amazon reviews are not always gospel."
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