While visiting one of the many used bookstores my friend and I went to while on vacation, I stumbled upon Mandy by Julie Andrews Edwards. I knew that the book existed, thanks to reading Julie Andrews' autobiographies, but I had forgotten about it until I saw it in the store. She had originally written the story for her daughter Jennifer as a forfeit in a game (it was going to be a short story, but it grew). In fact, Julie Andrews has written several stories, many with Emma Walton Hamilton, her daughter from her first marriage. Mandy is the first of her books that I've read.
Mandy is 10 and lives in an orphanage (a nice one, not one of the miserable ones that show up in many stories). She is exploring one day and finds a small cottage that seems abandoned. Mandy starts to clean up the cottage and the garden, clearing weeds and planting flowers. She keep the cottage a secret and enjoys having a place of her own.
In time, there are troubles with her constant disappearances, a mysterious stranger leaving her messages, and a very bad illness that leads to everything being discovered. And....I will not spoil the ending, but of course Mandy gets her happily-ever-after!
Mandy is an interesting and well-written story. The main character is sympathetic and, despite her faults, is a rather likeable girl. The other characters generally exist to keep the story going and lack a lot of depth, but it's meant to be a story about Mandy. It's a fairly straight-forward story with no major plot twists (although younger readers may not see the ending coming as quickly as I did; as an adult, I have a lot more book experience); even with it being somewhat predictable for me, I quite enjoyed the story. It's the type of book that I would have read over and over as a child and probably invented my own day dreams about.
Mandy intended for the 8-12 year old range, and I think they will enjoy it.
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