The Ogress and the Orphans

By: Kelly Barnhill / Narrated By: Suzanne Toren

Length: 13 hrs and 4 mins

CROWS! And goodness, and sadness, and love Love LOVE… and… CROWS!!!

I’d thought Kelly Barnhill had kinda sorta ruined me for Kelly Barnhill. After all, tho’ I’d loved Iron Hearted Violet, found it moving and jam-packed with good life lessons? Well, it wasn’t The Girl Who Drank The Moon, as THAT particular audiobook, with it’s sumptuous writing and pitch-perfect narration by Christina Moore just Blew. Me. AWAY.

I mean, how many times can you laugh and cry at the very same time? It was a stunner…

So I’m guesssssing that’s the reason it took me so long to get around to listening to The Ogress And The Orphans—Yup, I’d seen “Barnhill” whilst perusing New Releases, and I chucked a credit at it posthaste -but- knowing the author had alREAdy reached such a dazzling height, p’raps never to be reached again? Wellll, cue Pause Before Listening music.

Okay, that said? Lemme just start with the first minute of this drop dead GORGEOUS audiobook: Suzanne Toren’s narration. Tho’ I’ve (More or less) enjoyed her narrations, I’ve always thought she’d had the tones of a much older woman, making me wonder how she’d do with a story for Kids. Wazza m’ hesitation? I need NOT have waited for so long as I can say, nary a single doubt in my mind, that here she was Sheer and Utter PerFECtion! No narrating here; just a glorious glorious Performance Extraordinaire.

Stone-in-the-Glen was once a lovely little town where folks treated each other well, hailed each other heartily, loved to gather and discuss books and poetry and art. Then a dragon-slayer saved the town and became Mayor; then things, disasters, started happening. The library that housed all those wonderful stories and histories and philosophies and languages (Such as how to speak Crow) burned down; the school burned down. Other places, burned.

The charismatic Mayor with his glorious thatch of golden hair, his bright smile, his gold boot buckles, made speeches, and… soon Fear and Doubt entered the minds of the townsfolk. What was your Neighbor getting that you weren’t? Would your Neighbor soon steal from you?

And Give! the Mayor declared: To Meeeee, to keep your lives safe. If things aren’t good, why then you’re Not Giving Enough. And soon people kept to themselves, choosing not to rebuild the library, choosing not to start school again, stopping others from buying on credit, making oh sooo many things either illegal or just terrrrrribly frowned upon. So Stone-in-the-Glen became a rundown little town with all eyeing each other with suspicion at best, malice at worst.

But the Ogress didn’t see the Bad so much as she saw Need and decided to help. From the outskirts and in her crooked home, she gazed at the townsfolk through a periscope, tho’ her friends, the Crows, thought her foolish. She loved all the townsfolk, but she loved in particular the Orphans, fifteen children who loved each other fiercely but who also had fallen on hard times.

So overnight, the Ogress would take baked treats for each individual suffering in the town, most often from loneliness, or with a heart soured from mistrust, or from hunger (If you happened to be, oh say, an Orphan). She’d harvest fruits and vegetables and would leave large care packages, but Life was still a struggle in the town.

And the Mayor, the beguiling, bemusing, utterly mesmerizing Mayor, knew how to twist and turn his words so that he could get rich then richer then even richer; so that he might have a bit of power, then more, then even more. And when an Orphan disappeared, Fear became focused as the Ignorance and loud words became paired…. against a common Unknown.

This is Kelly Barnhill Magical Writing at its very best; it’s very MUCH like The Girl Who Drank The Moon in that the writing is lyrical, the characters are crafted with loving care, there’s the Enchantment of Good Hearts, there’s Love that’s effortless, Love that is hard-won, Love that is fearful, Love that is kind. And there are sooo many Life Lessons to be learned here, perfectly created, developed, and relayed with such such charm. So it’s Like that book, but it’s its own in its own right, and the Life Lessons are, dare I say it? Oh, I dare: Timely… Oh soooo timely.

We need kindness and love; we need each other when man’s inhumanity to man breaks us; we need a sense of community; we need to give a rat’s patoot and extend ourselves to each other. We need to answer the question the Orphans pose to all and sundry as they begin to wake up and see the reality that they’ve created thus far: What is a Neighbor?

Again: BEAUTIFULLY performed by Suzanne Toren who conveys everything with humility (A scared child) or magnificence (A FABulous Crow!).

Again: BEAUTIFULLY written by Barnhill.

Again: Just enchanting, heartbreaking, touching, delightful

Magnificent… A heart that beats in a toy butterfly.

-and-

CROWS!!!

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