Book Review: Scareground, Angela Kecojevic
Middle School Fantasy: Scareground, Angela Kecojevic
Blog Tour, September 11, 2023
Nancy knows who she is and what she will be. She is Nancy Crumpet, 12 years old, adopted daughter of the local bakers. When she grows up, she will join her parents in the bakery and eventually run it herself.
Nancy does have some questions, though. She loves her parents and does want to become the baker they are raising her to be. But she also wants adventure. Rather than remaining in the bakery, she much prefers running along the rooftops of her town, talking to the sky, visiting her friend Arthur, and planning a future of exploration. Nancy also wonders about the tattoo on her wrist. A silver horse, there as long as she can remember, clearly some kind of sign. The Crumpets have told her it is just a birthmark, but they tell her to keep it hidden and she has not even shown it to Arthur.
For the first time in 12 years, the fair is returning to town. Promising fun, excitement, adventure, and frights, the Scareground has come back to the site where a terrible accident occurred. Twelve years before, a fire took some lives and shut down the fair. The Crumpets are terrified of the fair and forbid Nancy from going. But is it possible to keep a girl longing for adventure from one that has come to her own town? Especially when she sees the same horse that is on her wrist has some association with the fair?
Angela Kecojevic’s Scareground is a delightfully eerie book that would appeal especially to middle grade readers. Nancy is a wonderful protagonist. Impulsive, inquisitive, full of questions and competing desires. I think many kids can relate to someone in that pre-puberty stage where things that once made sense are not as clear any more, and things that seemed out of reach are suddenly available. Nancy is very invested in her friendship with Arthur, another lonely kid who aspires to be something different, something other than a doctor like his father. Both of them love their parents, both of them want to make their parents happy, and both of them recognize the tension between following their own dreams and taking the path that is laid before them.
Kecojevic lets the revelations trickle out slowly through the book, looking at everything through the eyes of a twelve-year-old girl. Sometimes bold and sometimes tentative, sometimes insightful and sometimes obtuse, Kecojevic truly captures the heart of a girl on the precipice of becoming a teenager. As a one-time preteen who devoured Nancy Drew books, I believe that both boys and girls would enjoy the chills and thrills of this book.
Our thanks to The Write Reads for our copy of Scareground, provided so we could give an honest review. The opinions here are solely those of Scintilla. For other perspectives, check out the other bloggers on this tour.
Book Review: Scareground, Angela Kecojevic
Some great character insights here