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Greenglass House Paperback – Illustrated, November 1, 2016
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New York Times Bestseller * National Book Award Nominee * Winner of the Edgar Award for Best Juvenile Mystery
It’s wintertime at Greenglass House. The creaky smuggler’s inn is always quiet during this season, and twelve-year-old Milo, the innkeepers’ adopted son, plans to spend his holidays relaxing.
But on the first icy night of vacation, out of nowhere, the guest bell rings. Then rings again. And again...
Soon Milo’s home is bursting with odd, secretive guests, each one bearing a strange story that is somehow connected to the rambling old house. As objects go missing and tempers flare, Milo and Meddy, the cook’s daughter, must decipher clues and untangle the web of deepening mysteries to discover the truth about Greenglass House—and themselves.
- Print length400 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- Grade level5 - 7
- Lexile measure800L
- Dimensions5.12 x 0.94 x 7.62 inches
- PublisherClarion Books
- Publication dateNovember 1, 2016
- ISBN-10054454028X
- ISBN-13978-0544540286
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"An enchanting, empowering, and cozy read." — Booklist (starred review)
"An abundantly diverting mystery." — Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"The legends and folktales Milford creates add to Nagspeake's charm and gently prepare the ground for a fantasy twist." — Publishers Weekly
"Give this one to fans of Trenton Lee Stewart's The Mysterious Benedict Society." — School Library Journal
"The intricately woven connections, large cast of memorable characters, and beautifully detailed writing come together to make this exceptionally engaging story leap off the page." — VOYA
"Milford employs a Westing Game level of cunning in setting up clues, revealing their importance, and immediately pivoting to a higher level of mystery, gratifying readers as she pulls them into the story." — Horn Book Magazine
About the Author
Kate Milford is the New York Times best-selling author of the Edgar Award–winning, National Book Award nominee Greenglass House, as well as Ghosts of Greenglass House, Bluecrowne, The Thief Knot, and many more. She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York. www.greenglasshousebooks.com and www.katemilfordwritesbooks.com,
Twitter: @KateMilford
JAIME ZOLLARS has illustrated children’s books, magazines, newspapers, and ad campaigns for clients that include United Airlines, Random House, The American Red Cross, Scholastic, and the L.A. Weekly. Jaime is inspired by fairy tales and Flemish painters, non-fiction books, forgotten paper, found textures, and flea market photographs. She lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland, with her husband and son. To find out more, visit www.jaimezollars.com.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
The Smugglers’ Inn
There is a right way to do things and a wrong way, if you’re going to run in hotel in a smugglers’ town.
You shouldn’t make it a habit to ask too many questions, for one thing. And you probably shouldn’t be in it for the money. Smugglers are always going to be flush with cash as soon as they find a buyer for the eight cartons of fountain pen cartridges that write in illegal shades of green, but they never have money today. You should, if you are going to run a smugglers’ hotel, get a big account book and assume that whatever you write in it, the reality is, you’re going to get paid in fountain pen cartridges. If you’re lucky. You could just as easily get paid with something even more useless.
Milo Pine did not run a smugglers’ hotel, but his parents did. It was an inn, actually; a huge, ramshackle manor house that looked as if it had been cobbled together from discarded pieces of a dozen mismatched mansions collected from a dozen different cities. It was called Greenglass House, and it sat on the side of a hill overlooking an inlet of harbors, a little district built half on the shore and half on the piers that jutted out into the river Skidwrack like the teeth of a comb. It was a long climb up to the inn from the waterfront by foot, or an only slightly shorter trip by the cable railway that led from the inn’s private dock up the steep slope of Whilforber Hill. And of course the inn wasn’t only for smugglers, but that was who turned up most often, so that was how Milo thought of it.
Milo had lived at Greenglass House ever since he’d been adopted by Nora and Ben Pine when he was a baby. It had always been home. And he was used to the bizarre folks who passed through the inn, some of them coming back every season like extended family who showed up to pinch your cheeks at holidays and then disappeared again. After twelve years, he was even getting pretty good at predicting who was going to show up when. Smugglers were like bugs or vegetables. They had their seasons. Which was why it was so weird when the huge old bell on the porch, the one that was connected to the winch that drove the cable that in turn hauled the car up its tracks, started ringing.
The old iron bell’s tone changed with the seasons too, and with the time of day. This evening, the first of winter vacation, was cold and brittle, and the snow had just begun to fall. Today, therefore, the bell itself had a brittle tone. It had a sound like a gulp of frigid air.
Milo looked up from the coffee table, where he was working on a math problem. He liked to get his homework out of the way right off the bat so he could enjoy the holidays without thinking about school. He glanced at his mother, who was sprawled across the rag rug in front of the big stone fireplace, reading. “Someone’s coming up?” he asked incredulously.
Mrs. Pine got to her feet, tucked her book under her arm, padded across to the foyer, and peered out the window by the door. “Someone wants to. We’d better go start the winch.”
“But we never have guests the first week of vacation,” Milo protested. He felt a vague unease start to rise in his stomach and tried to swallow it down. Vacation couldn’t possibly get spoiled so quickly, could it? He’d only stepped off the launch that ferried the quayside kids to and from school a few hours ago.
“Well, usually we don’t,” Mrs. Pine said as she laced up her boots, “but that’s not because we have a rule about it. It’s just because that’s the way it usually turns out.”
“But it’s vacation!”
His mother shrugged and held out his coat. “Come on, kiddo.
Be a gentleman. Don’t send your mom out into the cold alone.”
Ah, the all-powerful gentleman card. Still grumbling, Milo got to his feet, quietly whispering “vacation vacation vacation” as he slouched across to join her. He had just about finished his homework. That was supposed to be the end of responsibility for a while.
The bell rang again. Milo gave in to his frustration, stopped in the middle of the foyer with one boot on, and gave a single, furious yell with his hands clenched at his sides.
Mrs. Pine waited with folded arms until he was finished. “Got that out of your system?” she asked gently. Milo scowled. “I know this isn’t the usual routine,” his mother added, “and I know you don’t like it when things don’t happen the way you expect.” She bent to hunt in the catch-all basket beside the door for a flashlight. “But look, being surprised isn’t always a bad thing.”
The fact that it sounded logical didn’t change the way Milo felt, of course. But he nodded and finished getting dressed for the cold. He followed his mother out onto the porch and across the lawn to a break in the dark wall of bare white birches and blue-green firs that covered the hillside. There, in a pool of deeper shadow, the grass gave way to a stone landing.
All his life, ever since he was really small, Milo had been very bothered by sudden changes of plan. More than bothered. Being surprised made him uneasy at the best of times. Now, tromping across the fresh snow in the bitter cold to haul a stranger up the hill, an unexpected stranger who was going to require him to work when all he really wanted was a quiet week or so with his parents and his house to himself . . . well, that made the uneasiness feel uncomfortably like panic.
The flashlight’s beam pierced the pool of shadow, which flickered and melted into butter-gold; Mrs. Pine had turned on the light in the little pavilion hidden in the trees where the cable railway landed.
The railway began a hundred yards below, at the river. There were other ways to get to the bottom of the gorge, or to get to the top if you were down. There was a steep and winding stair that ran more or less parallel to the railway and led to the same pavilion. There was also a road that snaked away from the inn and around the side of the hill down into the city proper, which was about a twenty-minute drive away. But only Milo, his parents, and the inn’s chef, Mrs. Caraway, ever really used the road. Guests didn’t come from the direction of the city. Guests came by river, sometimes in their own boats and sometimes by paying one of the dozens of old tars in the Quayside Harbors who’d ferry a person to Greenglass House in their equally aged boats for a few bucks. Given the option of being hauled up the steep hill in an antique conveyance that looked like a demented and oversized bumper car on rails or climbing three hundred and ten steps (Milo had counted), they always chose the former.
Inside the stone-floored pavilion were a bench, a shed, and the steel tracks of the railway. Mrs. Pine unlocked the shed, and Milo followed her inside to where the heavy cable that ran between the tracks looped around the giant spindle of the winch. Thanks to a complex mess of gears, once you got the winch going, it did all the work necessary to haul the single car up the slope. But it was old, and the lever tended to stick. Getting it moving was easier with two pairs of hands.
Together, Milo and his mother grasped the lever. “One, two, three!” Milo counted, and as one they hauled it forward. The cold metal of the gears whined like an old dog, and then they started to turn.
As Milo and Mrs. Pine waited for the railcar to click and clank its way to the top of the slope, he wondered what kind of person it was bringing up. Smugglers came in all kinds, and of course sometimes the inn had guests who were sailors or travelers and not smugglers at all. But not very often—and almost never in winter, when the Skidwrack and its hidden inlets were so often frozen.
While Milo was thinking, winding trails of glittering white firefly-sized lights came to life, outlining the pavilion and trailing off down the hill along the railing of the stairs. His mother straightened up from where she had just plugged them in.
“So what do you think? An elf on the lam from the North Pole? A popgun runner? Eggnog bootlegger?” she asked. “Best guess wins a brownie sundae. Loser makes it.”
“What are those flower bulbs Grandma always sends you at Christmas that you love?”
“Paperwhites?”
“Yeah. It’s a guy with a cargo of those. And stockings. Green ones with pink stripes.” A low whine joined the creaking of the cable around the big spindle in the shed. You could tell where the railcar was by how the sounds it made changed. Milo pictured the misshapen old iron lamppost the car would be passing right about now.
“Green and pink stockings?”
“Yeah. He probably knows it was a bad idea, but now he’s stuck with them. He was forced to take the cargo on—no, tricked into it—and now if he can’t move the stockings, he’s ruined. He’s already trying to figure out how to convince people to switch from baskets to striped socks for Easter.” Milo leaned over the pavilion railing and peered through the thickening snow falling through the bare birches and icing the pine branches, searching for the first glimpse of the car and its passenger. It was still out of view, but from the vibration of the rails, he knew it was being hauled up the steepest part of the slope now. “He’s got meetings set up with people this week too. Magazine writers, some weird TV star, trying to see if he can make green and pink stripes a big fashion thing next year. And a sock-puppet company.”
He leaned over the railing again, just far enough out that a few flakes of snow managed to make it past the roof onto his eyelashes. There it was: the blue metal nose of the railcar with its silver racing stripes (painted a few years back by Milo and his father along with its name, Whilforber Whirlwind, on the sides). And then, a moment later, its passenger: a lanky man in a felt hat and a plain black coat. Milo could just make out a pair of oversized glasses with huge tortoiseshell rims on his nose.
He wilted. The stranger looked disappointingly like somebody’s grandfather. Maybe even a bit like a schoolteacher.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Pine remarked, as if she’d read Milo’s mind. “I could kind of believe that guy would take a chance on green and pink stripes.” She ruffled his hair. “Come on, kiddo. Put on your welcome face.”
“I hate the welcome face,” Milo mumbled. But he straightened up and tried to look cheerful as the Whirlwind made its final ascent to the pavilion.
Up close, the stranger looked even more boring. Plain hat, plain coat, plain face, plain blue suitcase tucked in the boot of the car. Beneath the glasses, though, his eyes were bright and sharp as they flicked from Mrs. Pine to Milo and back.
Milo felt himself stiffen. It always started this way, whenever the Pines met someone new. You could just about see that person’s thoughts: One of these things is not like the other. This stranger was hiding it better than most, for sure; there was no change in his expression, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t thinking it too. How did a Chinese kid wind up in Nagspeake with that lady for a mom? Obviously adopted.
The car came to a jerking stop at last, nearly sending the unexpecting passenger’s face straight into the Whilforber Whirlwind’s padded dashboard.
“Hi.” Milo’s mother beamed as the stranger clambered out of the car and brushed the accumulated snow from his shoulders. “Welcome to Greenglass House. I’m Nora Pine. This is my son, Milo.”
“Thank you,” the stranger said, his voice just as boring as the rest of him. “My name’s Vinge. De Cary Vinge.”
Well, Milo thought sourly, he had an interesting name, at least. “I’ll get your suitcase for you, Mr. Vinge.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Mr. Vinge said quickly as Milo reached for it. “Let me carry that. It’s quite heavy.” He grasped the handle and pulled. It must’ve been heavy; Mr. Vinge had to put a foot up on the side of the car and push off for leverage.
Which was when Milo’s mother gave him a significant glance. Uncomprehending, Milo took another look at the stranger. Then he spotted it: one garishly striped sock, visible for just a moment before Mr. Vinge stumbled backwards with his suitcase. If anything, the orange and purple combination was even weirder than Milo’s imaginary green and pink.
“Looks like maybe I owe you a brownie sundae,” Mrs. Pine whispered. Then, louder, “This way, Mr. Vinge. Let’s get you in out of the snow.”
Product details
- Publisher : Clarion Books; Reprint edition (November 1, 2016)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 400 pages
- ISBN-10 : 054454028X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0544540286
- Reading age : 10 - 12 years, from customers
- Lexile measure : 800L
- Grade level : 5 - 7
- Item Weight : 2.31 pounds
- Dimensions : 5.12 x 0.94 x 7.62 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #42,322 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #334 in Children's Mystery, Detective, & Spy
- #1,065 in Children's Friendship Books
- #1,339 in Children's Fantasy & Magic Books
- Customer Reviews:
About the author
Kate is the author of THE BONESHAKER, THE BROKEN LANDS, GREENGLASS HOUSE, and THE LEFT-HANDED FATE, as well as their companion novellas THE KAIROS MECHANISM and BLUECROWNE (available at www.clockworkfoundry.com). Forthcoming books include GHOSTS OF GREENGLASS HOUSE (2017) and THE RACONTEUR'S COMMONPLACE BOOK. She has also written several plays, a couple of screenplays, and an assortment of scholarly articles on subjects as diverse as self-aware ironmongery and how to make saltwater taffy in a haunted kitchen. She is a contributing writer for the Nagspeake Board of Tourism and Culture at www.nagspeake.com and a passionate shutterbug. Originally from Annapolis, she now splits her time between Brooklyn and the Magothy coast. She has a husband called Nathan, a kid called Griffin, and two dogs called Sprocket and Ed. She drinks way too much coffee.
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It is a middle grade book revolving around our main character Milo, who is the adopted son of the Pines'. He was looking forward to his Christmas break and some much needed downtime with his family, who happen to own and run an inn - The Greenglass House, that is known to welcome all kinds of visitors, including smugglers. However, just as Milo had finished all his schoolwork early to really enjoy the rest of his break, several guests show up at the doorstep of the inn, each with a stranger reason for the visit than the next. Milo, a lover of mysteries, and mainly just bored, begins an adventure, in which he tries to find out the real reason behind their stay, and how they might be connected to one another.
In doing so, he meets a young girl his age, Meddy, who encourages him to role play and use his imagination. Something that proves to be quite difficult for Milo at first, as he is grounded in reality, but he soon learns to enjoy the role playing as it gives him a chance to pretend to be someone he is not. This is important for Milo's character development, as he struggles with his identity and the many unanswered questions regarding his background and birth parents, and seems to deal with a lot of guilt for wanting to know, given that his parents are great and loving and have never done anything for him to wish otherwise.
At first, I was a little put off by the "game", maybe because it's way above my age group and so I couldn't help but think how childish these kids are being. Meddy, especially, came off as very annoying and clingy and her insistence on sticking to character could become quite irritating - Milo sure did get frustrated with her a few times, however, as they get closer and closer to solving the mystery the game begins to make more sense until it reaches a climax, which honestly left me sitting with my jaw on the floor and gave me goosebumps all over.
I really enjoyed getting to know each of the guests separately, and trying to figure out who was up to what. They all act quite suspicious, and they all have bizarre backgrounds that sometimes don't add up. Suddenly, things start disappearing - guests belongings are being stolen, and everyone is a suspect. Milo makes it his mission to find these missing belongings, but more importantly to find out who is behind all this thievery - and why. When Milo suggests that they all begin sharing stories after dinner, as a way to pass the time and get to know each other a little better, you start seeing glimpses of each one's true intentions and Milo uses that time to try and assess the details for any clues and piece things together, with the help of Meddy.
It all reminded me a little bit of Agatha Christie's, And Then There Were None. Obviously, a more innocent, child-friendly version, just in the way that these strangers are all stuck in a house and telling stories and hiding things and so on. Then again, I probably made that connection because I had recently read it.
A great mystery, with some great characters that are all well developed and rounded. Milo is a great protagonist to have and root for, and his sidekick Meddy is a wonderful companion to him. The twist in the story took me completely off-guard, and I honestly didn't see it coming. I don't know if it's just me, or if Kate Milford played it well, but I was blindsided and found it one of the most unpredictable twists that I had read in a while. Very well done. That twist and ending alone quickly made this book one of my favorites, otherwise, it would have been just another regular old mystery.
12-year old Milo Pine lives with his adoptive parents in Greenglass House — a rambling old Inn whose “regulars” are the smugglers who need a little “shore time.” Greenglass House is perched above a deep gorge — accessible only via a creaky cable car named the Whilforber Whirlwind or a 310 step stairway.
As Christmas vacation commences, and Milo prepares to snuggle in for some serious R&R in the empty Inn, the cable car bell keeps ringing and the number of guests (and emergency helpers) grow until Milo finds himself amidst a sea of eccentric characters who all seem to be on delightfully connected personal quests that center on the house itself.
Weaving together folk tales and local legend with a little paranormal thrown in, Milo uncovers the mysteries of Greenglass House and the odd set of characters who are so fixated on it. Milo — prone to anxiety and panic attacks — also develops delightfully through the twin instruments of literature and role playing games.
Good writing — the story is complex enough to engage adults and yet completely accessible to the target kid audience.
Will the Pines keep all the guests happy this winter?
The Pine Family
The Pine family consists of Nora, Ben, and Milo Pine. Nora has lived in Greenglass House since she was twelve when her parents bought it. Her family decided to turn the house into an Inn that many people have used. Let them be law-abiding citizens who just need a place to stay or smugglers. The smugglers who use the house only come during a particular season, and that's the way it has always been. While Nora was living there, she met Ben, and the two, as some would say, lived happily ever after. They are married and end up with the Inn when Nora's parents hand it off to them to be run by a young couple.
Nora and Ben decided to adopt a child out of the goodness of their hearts. That child is Milo, and he has been with them since he was a baby. The happy couple is happy to have a child run around the house and keep their guests on their toes. Milo is now twelve years old and does whatever his parents need him to do on their on-season but not off-season. Winter is usually their off-season since not many people would dare go to them as there aren't many different ways to get to the Inn. The fact that they ended up with five people this winter vacation didn't bode well for poor Milo.
The way that Ms. Milford wrote this family dynamic between the three of them was well executed. I loved how the three of them were intuned to what the other one of them needed. For example, Milo knows he must talk and be present with Nora. I love the little competition that the two of them do with their guests. Except when Milo was with Ben, Milo knew that Ben liked the silence, and just a head nod was all the acknowledgment that Milo needed to give at the time.
The Mystery
Milo is just starting his winter vacation right after finishing his homework when the guest bell rings throughout the night. They had an empty house with just the three of them, and then out of nowhere, five guests showed up, all wanting to stay during the holiday. Almost all of them had something to do with the house somehow, and Milo had no clue how or why they had to show up. Not only that, but why now, and what is the connection? Milo met a girl named Meddy, the Inn's chef's daughter, and they decided to figure it out while playing a game. I had difficulty keeping track of some things, but I did guess who the odd person was. Except I didn't figure out why that person was there.
Four Stars
Ms. Milford has written an excellent book, and I wouldn't mind diving back into the series at another date. Mostly to figure out what other types of trouble Milo and Meddy get themselves into. I am giving Greenglass House by Kate Milford four stars and recommending it. It's a good book for people who like roleplaying games like dungeons and dragons.
Thank you for dropping by! I hope you enjoyed this review of Greenglass House by Kate Milford.
Until the next time,
Karen the Baroness
Top reviews from other countries
A very cool & imaginative blend of detective type stories cut through with fantasy.
The writing is great and the story pulls you in.
A welcome respite during COVID trials.