Reviews

• Entirely satisfactory.

• Heartwarming and Inspiring Miracles on Maple Hill is a beautiful story about family, healing, and the magic of nature. The characters feel real and the descriptions of country life are vivid and comforting. It’s a touching read that reminds us how kindness and love can help us overcome tough times. Highly recommended for readers of all ages!

• Seriously, if you're a fan of the Little House on the Prairie books you're going to love this. Marly captured my heart from the beginning. I loved experiencing all the miracles right along with her.

• I am finding this novel very useful in teaching English to Chinese students both for American (and Canadian) culture but also for everyday language. The author doesn't shy away from current difficulties in family life and gives hope for restoration in the case of the father experiencing PTSD.

• In my ongoing attempt to read all the newberry medal books I found Miracles on Maple Hill to be a very good book. This book won the newberry in 1957, and tells the story of a family that moves to the Pennsylvania country to live a more simplistic life away from the hustle and bustle of the big city. The story is very straightforward and easy to read. I really liked all the characters in the book, especially the children. Marley the young daughter in the book was my favorite, and I felt like the author wrote the story for a child Marley's age to read (about 5th grade). One of the things that I found interesting about reading the older newberry books is that you can see how the author dealt with serious issues within the timeline of that moment in history. For example, in this book it never completly comes out and says that the father in this book was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome from WWII, but the signs are left everywhere for the reader to pick up on. I wish that that the author had developed more of the stories relationships with the adults in the book, but I have to remind myself that this book is written with children not adults in mind. I gave the book a fourth star because I loved the air of nostalgia that the book left me with. The way she describes the winters on Maple Hill and especially the springs with the syrup left me wanting to linger at the syrup camps of that time and smell the sweet aroma of the sap cooking over a fire. This is a great book from a different time, that lets a little insight into the struggles of the post-WWII family and how they dealt with them.

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