Nory Ryan's family has lived on Maidin Bay on the west coast of Ireland for generations, raising a pig and a few chickens, planting potatoes, getting by. Every year Nory's father goes away on a fishing boat and returns with the rent money for the English lord who owns their cottage and fields, the English lord bent upon forcing the Irish from their land so he can tumble the cottages and clear the fields for grazing. Times are never easy on Maidin Bay, but this year, a terrible blight attacks the potatoes. No crop means starvation. Twelve-year-old Nory must summon the courage and ingenuity to find food, to find hope, to find a way to help her family survive.

Patricia Reilly Giff is one of my favorite middle grade authors. She is able to bring the past alive with engaging characters and fascinating stories. I find her very engaging and I thoroughly enjoy all her books. ( )

Sad and grim. Not for the faint of heart. ( )

In my opinion, this is a pretty good book. I liked it for a couple reasons, one being the character of Nory. Nory remained hopeful throughout the story, in which she worked hard to keep her brother alive and powered through the starvation during the famine. After the long period of hope and suffering, she eventually learned her father was alive and received tickets to go to America. Her hope was not for nothing. Another reason was for the tough concepts the book covered. While this is fiction, it covers a devastating time in history for the Irish, in which they went through a tragedy full of starvation and financial crisis. Nory was scrambling for money to pay for rent, and her family was slowly starving as the food supply dwindled more and more. The overall message to take away from this story is that even when times are difficult, never give up hope. As mentioned earlier, Nory was a big help and attempted to spread hope where she could. Eventually, the hope paid off and lasted her until she was able to be saved. ( )

I had mixed feelings about the book Nory Ryan’s Song by Patricia Reilly Griff. This historical fiction divulges what really happened during the potato famine in Ireland. I liked this book for its point of view, language and the characters. However, I did not like the plot of the story. I liked the language of this story because the language was very engaging and descriptive. I felt as though I watched a movie instead of reading a book, because I could picture everything the book described, like Patrick’s Well, Patcheen and Anna. I could picture the houses they all lived in, and the fields when they were healthy and when they were dying. I also liked the point of view the story was told in. I liked seeing everything from Nory’s point of view. Even when she was depressed, she was still strong; she dug deep to find her inner strength that her family knew she had all along. She rarely put herself first, and when she did, she couldn’t be blamed because of the situations she was put in. Such as when she had to decide whether to buy more food or pay for a package, and she chose the package over food, because her big sister, Maggie had sent it to her, and she had been thinking about the package for weeks. I was pleasantly surprised how the book unfolded the truth: when we were told information, it was not a foreshadowing for a different outcome, or only Nory’s thoughts and opinions, instead it was always the truth. When she described a patterned horse’s footsteps, she knew it was Devlin, and she was always right! It wasn’t just what she was thinking, it was her thoughts that always ended up being facts. I thought that was an interesting way to reveal information. And I also liked this book for its characters. I liked how each of the characters unfolded in the book. How we were first introduced to Anna as an old witch, and turns out she was waiting to be the mother figure Nory needed. I liked the simple, innocent, almost flirtatious romance between Sean Red and Nory. They always had been each other’s rock and were never going to leave each other’s side. Even when Sean had to leave, he promised Nory that they would be together again someday in Brooklyn NY, on Smith Street. However, I did not enjoy the plot of the story, not because of the subject matter, but more from a reader’s satisfaction viewpoint. I wish it gave more closure. I wanted her to reach her family, there was always a sense of hopelessness around the corner, someone with the power to pull all their plans and hopes right out from under them, and how am I supposed to believe that Nory wasn’t given any trouble getting to her family in the end? I wished Anna had gone with her and Maeve, the dog. I wished we got to see all of them together in Brooklyn. Brooklyn was never discussed from the characters in Brooklyn’s point of view, only from the people of Ireland’s point of view, making it hard to believe that Brooklyn was truly a better place to be than Ireland. What if it was the same? I wanted to learn so much more of what happens next. I also wished we knew what was in her package, I wish we found out what had happened to Nory’s mother, like how she died. I wish Cat Neely had a better ending, or at least we would find out where they ended up. I had a love-hate relationship with this book. It was great in so many ways, but in other ways, I was left to guess in points at which I would have been better off knowing from the author what had happened. The big message of this story was quite pertinent. Patricia Reilly Griff’s big message to her readers is to never take anything you have for granted. History is trying to teach us a lesson, and today, we have the luxury to simply learn from it, so no one has to live through a famine like that again. Her goal was to learn everything she could during her recent trips to Ireland and pray that she could take what she had learned and tell it like it really happened so her children and grandchildren and everyone would know. She wanted everyone to know how valuable life is, and how never to take it for granted.