One day, she is exploring over the stone wall that borders the orphanage and happens upon a small, deserted cottage in the woods she makes up her mind that the cottage is now hers, and she works hard to make it a place she can call her own.

Mandy lives in an orphanage in England and because she’s one of the oldest children in the home, she has special privileges, like sharing an attic bedroom with her friend, Sue, and working part-time at the local grocery store. Mandy is the story of a ten-year-old orphan who dreams of a place and a family to call her own. In my defense, it was on sale for less than $5 and I had a gift card! So instead of waiting a few weeks to go home for the holidays and read my much-loved copy, I decided to buy another copy on Amazon. On this dreary fall day last year, I was suddenly filled with the urge to read the book immediately. I received Mandy by the incomparable Julie Andrews for my 8th birthday, and read and reread the book dozens of times throughout my childhood. One day, I was browsing Amazon and I came across a book in my cart that I absolutely loved as a child. Fans of Julie Andrews Edwards- Sound of Music star of stage and screen-will be thrilled to see her latest children's book, Little Bo: The Story of Bonnie Boadicea, or to an earlier favorite, The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles.I recently moved away from home and had to leave the majority of my library behind, except for a few of my favorite books. Judith Gwyn Brown's Edward Gorey-esque pen and ink drawings (with none of Gorey's sinister air) are quietly memorable.

Any sometimes-lonely child with a giant imagination will recognize Mandy's dreams and rejoice in her ultimate fairy-tale happy ending. Holding her secret closer and closer to her heart, this imaginative dreamer inadvertently endangers her reputation-and her life.įor every child who has fallen in love with The Secret Garden or A Little Princess, Julie Andrews Edwards's 1971 novel will be a heartwarming discovery. Embarking on a clandestine domestic fantasy involving gardening tools and soap flakes, Mandy finds herself being less than honest about where and how she's spending her days. This lonely ache sets her to wandering farther afield, and leads her to a startling and wonderful discovery over the orphanage wall-a very old, very small, seemingly abandoned cottage. Really, what does Mandy have to worry about? So it comes as a surprise even to Mandy when a small restlessness begins to grow in her. For an orphan child whose life is filled with comfortable, predictable sameness, with no particular hardships, life is, well, all right.

Mandy book julie andrews