Heap House

Gr 7–9—Welcome to Heap House, a sprawling, dark, dingy mansion, situated in the middle of a vast pile of junk. It's home to the Iremongers, a strange and reclusive extended family. They intermarry to preserve their bloodlines and consider themselves almost royalty. People with partial Iremonger blood are their servants. Their identities are tied to "birth objects," commonplace things that represent and shape who they are from birth. Clod Iremonger is 15, with a bath plug for a birth object. He is unhappily engaged to his cousin Pinalippy. Clod has a skill that makes him seem odd in the eyes of the other Iremongers; he can hear the birth objects speaking. They only speak their names, but their voices are always with him. He is resigned to his dreary life until he meets Lucy Pennant, an orphan who is told she has a little Iremonger blood and forced to work at Heap House. Lucy changes the way Clod sees his world, but her arrival sets off a chain of events that might mean the end of Heap House. Black-and-white illustrations are as deliciously unsettling as the text. Characters are rich with personality, from Clod's frightening Granny who has never left her bedroom, to his bath plug, who manages to be sassy even though the only thing he says is "James Henry Hayward." Some colorful language makes this most suitable for older middle grade and teen readers. Stories don't get much weirder, but that's precisely what makes it so magical.—Mandy Laferriere, Fowler Middle School, Frisco, TX