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A review by meghanfulmer
The Warden's Daughter by Jerry Spinelli
3.0
I had such high hopes for this book. A colleague and I run a book club for some 4th and 5th grade students, and we all voted and chose this book to read. First of all, though it is marketed for this age range, it was very difficult for our kids to read; in fact, I didn't find myself feeling as though I were reading a YA book, except for the fact that it is about a young girl.
The Warden's Daughter is about Cammie O'Reilly, a 12-year-old girl who lives in an apartment above the prison for which her father is a warden. When Cammie was a baby, her mother died, and it seems that neither Cammie nor her father has ever really dealt with that grief. The beginning of the book was extremely slow for me. Cammie has some friends and we see how they interact together. We also watch as Cammie tries to win over her housekeeper/babysitter (who is also a prisoner), but she always manages to be kind of a brat so that doesn't get very far. There are also some scenes in which Cammie interacts with the prisoners that were, honestly, just beyond me. I cannot imagine how a father--even a grieving father--would allow his child that kind of freedom.
Though the book did pick up in the second half, the characters who emerged as important were not given enough weight at the beginning of the book, so their sudden importance seemed odd and forced. The big "twist" in the book is also, in my opinion, completely unbelievable and it just didn't seem to fit with what I read in the first half of the book. Overall, I did not care for pretty much any character; I found them to be a bit flat, and I found that Spinelli does an awful lot of showing, not telling. I would have given it only two stars except that our little book club did have some good conversation surrounding the book, and our girls connected to Cammie in several ways, so we considered that a win :)
The Warden's Daughter is about Cammie O'Reilly, a 12-year-old girl who lives in an apartment above the prison for which her father is a warden. When Cammie was a baby, her mother died, and it seems that neither Cammie nor her father has ever really dealt with that grief. The beginning of the book was extremely slow for me. Cammie has some friends and we see how they interact together. We also watch as Cammie tries to win over her housekeeper/babysitter (who is also a prisoner), but she always manages to be kind of a brat so that doesn't get very far. There are also some scenes in which Cammie interacts with the prisoners that were, honestly, just beyond me. I cannot imagine how a father--even a grieving father--would allow his child that kind of freedom.
Though the book did pick up in the second half, the characters who emerged as important were not given enough weight at the beginning of the book, so their sudden importance seemed odd and forced. The big "twist" in the book is also, in my opinion, completely unbelievable and it just didn't seem to fit with what I read in the first half of the book. Overall, I did not care for pretty much any character; I found them to be a bit flat, and I found that Spinelli does an awful lot of showing, not telling. I would have given it only two stars except that our little book club did have some good conversation surrounding the book, and our girls connected to Cammie in several ways, so we considered that a win :)